RESPITE IN SAIGON

Press, Volume CVIII, Issue 31676, 11 May 1968, Page 13

RESPITE IN SAIGON

(N.Z P.A.-Reuter —Copyright;

SAIGON, May 10. A strange feeling of calm spread across Saigon this morning after five days of fighting and the sound of morning traffic was no longer interrupted by the continual thump of artillery and rocket shells. Some military observers said the Viet Cong may have decided to stop fighting as a gesture towards the Paris talks, but others said that they could simply be resting. Allied forces drove Viet Cong invaders from much of Saigon today, but the Communists pushed back the allies at the “Y”’ bridge gateway

>on the city’s southern edge, United Press International reported. United States helicopter gunships rocketed the bands of guerrillas firing from the rubble of a shanty town near the southern end of the 1800 ft span. Elsewhere in Saigon, the Viet Cong was on the run from American and South Vietnames troops clearing streets house by house.

Allied spokesmen said that more than 2800 Communists have been killed in Saigon since they launched a nationwide offensive on Sunday, to coincide with today’s opening of preliminary peace talks between the United States and North Vietnam in Paris. Across the nation, more than 3300 Communists have been killed in the offensive. Military spokesmen said that allied losses were a twentieth of this figure. With the easing of fighting, some of the precautions in the centre of Saigon have been relaxed, and a few of

the heavy barbed-wire barricades erected at strategic points in the city have been removed.

But the people of Saigon showed no emotion over the unexpected quiet. A United States official concerned with the welfare of 40,000 men, women and children made homeless by the recent attacks on the city said: “For them, the lull has come just a little too late.”