Americans Revise Casualty Figures

Press, Volume CVIII, Issue 31598, 8 February 1968, Page 11

Americans Revise Casualty Figures

( N.Z.P.A.-Reuter—Copyright) SAIGON, February 7. The United States Military Command claimed today that 22,748 of the enemy had been killed throughout South Vietnam in the savage fighting between 6 p.m. last Thursday and midnight on Tuesday.

This was an increase of 1418 in the figure given yesterday. Command spokesmen said the number of detainees had risen to 4914, and the number of enemy weapons captured to 5847. In the same period, 614 Americans were killed and 3408 wounded. South Vietnamese military losses were given as 1130 killed and 3821 wounded, and casualties among other allied forces were listed as 24 killed and 429 wounded. In Washington, the United States Defence Department discounted suggestions that its recent claims of heavy Communist losses were exaggerated, and described the figures as “fairly accurate.” The casualty figures were

all based on body counts, and were checked very carefully, a spokesman for the department said. The vast difference between Communist and Allied casualties given recently by the United States Military Command in Saigon had led some radio and press commentators to question how accurate the figures were. The Defence Secretary (Mr Robert McNamara), questioned about the figures in a television programme on Sunday, acknowledged that there “might be error and overstatement,” but he added that the figures were “a reasonable approximation.” A cable message from Canberra says that in the 5J years to February 2, 140 Australian soldiers and military advisers had died in Vietnam. Of these, 107 were killed in action and another 33 whose wounds proved fatal. Australians wounded numbered 566.