Vietnam Bomb Blast Kills 18, Wounds 38

Press, Volume CVIII, Issue 31582, 20 January 1968, Page 13

Vietnam Bomb Blast Kills 18, Wounds 38

(N.Z.P. A.-Reuter —Copyright) SAIGON, January 19. Viet Cong terrorists detonated a mine in a crowded Mekong Delta market place today, killing 18 persons and wounding 38.

The scene of the explosion was a small hamlet north-west of Phu Vinh, the provincial capital of the province of Vinhbinh, 60 miles south of Saigon. United States officials say the dead included 12 civilians and six South Vietnamese soldiers. The wounded included 12 civilians, 25 Government soldiers and one Vietnamese peace worker. Elsewhere in South Vietnam, United States marines are reported to have killed 162 North Vietnamese troops in a fierce, six-hour fight just south of the demilitarised zone. A United States military spokesman said the marines suffered eight dead and 39 wounded. In the air war, American

pilots bombed the Kep Ha airfield, 59 miles north-east of Hanoi, and a radar site and highway bridge near the capital. Most raids, however, were concentrated in the southern area of the North and along the Mu Gia Pass, through which North Vietnamese supplies must pass to reach the south.