PARATROOPERS OCCUPY HUE

Press, Volume CVI, Issue 31088, 17 June 1966, Page 9

PARATROOPERS OCCUPY HUE

(N.Z. Press Association—Copyright) SAIGON, June 16. South Vietnam’s radical Buddhists lost another round today in their three-month campaign against Premier Nguyen Gao Ky as his paratroopers occupied Hue without major resistance, the Associated Press reported.

The 500 soldiers swept into the northern Buddhist stronghold at dawn, quickly hauled Buddhist altars off main streets and took positions at the Hue radio station and one of the bridges across the Perfume river. The paratroopers fired a few tear-gas canisters, but the operation was carried off without any concerted resistance from the army of Buddhist youths and dissident troops who have kept the city of 160,000 in a virtual state of rebellion for weeks. In a similar altar-clearing operation in Saigon today a 22-year-old Buddhist nun was shot and seriously wounded as she was picking up an overturned altar table. It was not known who fired the shot. Other nuns said riot police

threw tear-gas to disperse about 50 to 60 nuns gathered round altars outside Saigon’s Tu Nghiem pagoda. A police spokesman today confirmed that a 18-year-old Buddhist youth was shot dead during rioting at the Buddhist pagoda headquarters last night. It was the first death in the recent wave of street violence in Saigon. The United States armed forces radio today ordered all American servicemen to avoid demonstrations in the capital and not to try to remove or force their way through road blocks. FIRST YEAR Encouraged by the success of its firmness, the ruling junta went ahead with plans to celebrate the anniversary of Ky’s first year in office on Sunday. The 35-year-old Air Force

chief has been in power longer than any other Vietnamese government chief since President Ngo Dinh Diem fell in November, 1963. In a gesture of continued support for Ky, the United States command announced that American forces will join Vietnamese and other allied troops in an anniversary parade on Sunday. The junta will probably also use the occasion to proclaim its terms for the September 11 election of a constituent assembiy.