NEW ENEMY ATTACK

Press, Volume LXXXIX, Issue 27097, 21 July 1953, Page 9

NEW ENEMY ATTACK

U.S. Marines Lose Ground

(Rec. 11.50 p.m.) SEOUL, July 20. About 2000 Chinese Communists drove the United States Marines off two key western front outposts today In a reckless assault, even as Allied and Communist staff officers met to wipe out the last barriers to a cease fire in Korea. Attacking behind heavy artillery fire the two reinforced Communist battalions battled up the hills of East Berlin and Berlin outposts north-east of the Panmunjon truce site. The battle was the first big Communist attack on the western front in several weeks. The victory gave the Communists full control of the vital hill area made up of the outposts Reno, Carson, Vegas, East Berlin, and Berlin. The enemy apparently seized the Berlin outposts m the belief that no effort would be made to retake them with an armistice imminent.

Allied planes later in the day pounded both outposts. The fighting on the western sector hills was the most violent along the front, although smaller scale but equally fierce action flared along the tense Kumsong sector in east-central Korea.

There South Korean troops, attempting to regain ground lost in last week’s massive assault, were pushed back

•lightly. A Chinese battalion—about 750 men —hit the South Koreans as they advanced cautiously near the junction of the Kumsong and Pukhan rivers just south of Lookout Mountain. It was the farthest northward penetration of the South Koreans in their •low-moving march in the 20-mile Kumsong bulge sector.

Skirmishes at Night The Bth Army reported 33 skirmishes —mostly small patrol clashes—along the sweltering front during the night. Temperatures soared to almost 100 degrees today. The sth Air Force announced that Allied planes destroyed their thousandth Communist plane during the week-end. Ey dusk yesterday the total had been brought to 1008, compared with an Allied combat loss of 108 planes, 56 of them Sabres. These figures were for air-to-air combat. The Air Force said that Allied fighter-bombers made 1530 sorties over the Communist battleline yesterday. The aircraft dropped 1,400,0001 b of bombs.

The Navy said that planes with the potential of five Air Force wings swept off the carriers Lake Champlain. Princeton, Boxer, and Philippine Sea In the Sea of Japan, hitting gun positions and troops with high-explosive bombs, napalm, and rockets.