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The southern attack was now reinforced, and by 1 P.M. had pushed forward to within five hundred yards of the redoubt, but concealed trenches again stopped further progress and the Turks made several counter-attacks with reinforcements which had by now arrived from the direction of Magasis.
This meant that General Gorringe not only had carried an important position, but also that he had advanced the British lines on the south bank of the Tigris by about ten miles, for on May 20, 1916, the British positions were established along a line running from the village of Magasis, on the south bank of the Tigris, about five miles east of Kut-el-Amara, to a point on the Shatt-al-Hai, about equally distant from Kut.
The Turks still held the Sanna-i-Yat positions on the left bank of the Tigris, but on the right they had been pushed back to a line running across the angle from the Tigris at Magasis towards its southern tributary the Shatt-el-Hai.
To the south of Magasis, on the south bank of the river, British troops occupied an advanced position about three and one-half miles south of the main position. Then they stopped there too. About the same time, June 10, 1916, Turkish guns sunk three barges on the Tigris, the only actual success which the Sultan's forces won since the fall of Kut-el-Amara.
He chose the Shumran bend, but diverted the attention of the Turks by thrusting at Sanna-i-Yat from 17 to 22 February. On the 22nd he also made feints to cross at Magasis and Kut, but on the 23rd the real attack was made at Shumran. Troops were ferried across and a bridge built before evening, and on the 24th the Turks were driven back on to their lines of communication between Baghdad and Kut.
Although this undertaking was carried out most courageously in the face of the Turkish guns commanding the entire stretch of the Tigris between Sanna-i-Yat and the Turkish lines below Kut-el-Amara, it miscarried, for the boat went aground near Magasis, about four miles below Kut-el-Amara. Another desperate effort to get at least some supplies to Kut by means of aeroplanes also failed.
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