54 N. Vietnamese Killed In Battle

Press, Volume CVII, Issue 31551, 13 December 1967, Page 21

54 N. Vietnamese Killed In Battle

(N.Z. Press Association-Copyright) SAIGON, December 12. United States Marines killed at least 54 of the enemy and apparently broke up a planned North Viet* namese offensive on the South Vietnam border, American spokesmen said today.

The marines suffered 20 men wounded in yesterday’s fight on the rain-muddied southern edge of the border’s six-mile-wide Demilitarised Zone.

The marines caught up to 100 North Vietnamese setting up positions about five miles east-north-east of Gio Linh, one of the American forts lining the southern edge of

the zone. For six hours the Communists used mortars and machine-guns but fled at the sight of United States reinforcements.

Senator Charles Percy, a possible Republican Presidential candidate, came under Viet Cong mortar and small arms fire today while walking through a deserted village with four other American civilians.

His wife was waiting in a nearby helicopter which took

off as two mortar rounds burst within 20 feet, Senator Percy told reporters. The helicopter carrying Mrs Percy took off as soon as the first mortar round came in and rushed to the nearby town of Song Be. The helicopter returned within 20 minutes accompanied by four or five others to provide security. In Washington the United States State Department renewed an offer to strengthen the Intematonal Control Commission in Vietnam to help protect the neutrality of Laos and Cambodia.

The department spokesman, Mr Robert McCloskey, outlined the American position in responding to Soviet charges that the United States was preparing to extend its Vietnam military action to those countries.

“As we have said many

times, we seek no wider war,” he told a press conference in answering the Russian claim issued through Tass news agency.

In the United Nations Russia demanded immediate action by the United Nations to stop what it called reported Australian attempts to send New Guinean soldiers to fight in the Vietnam war. /

The Soviet delegate, Mr Pavel Shakhov, also repeated charges that Papua and New Guinea were being used as military bases to support the allied war effort in Vietnam.

Addressing the United Nation’s Trusteeship Committee, Mr Shakhov further declared that Australia was guilty of “open banditry, highway robbery . . . and rapacious exploitation” of the natural resources of Papua and New Guinea.

He charged that cheap labour was ruthlessly exploited in the territories in a manner similar to the exploitation of blacks in southern Africa.