U.S. Bombers Raid Mekong Delta

Press, Volume CVIII, Issue 31728, 11 July 1968, Page 17

U.S. Bombers Raid Mekong Delta

(N.Z. Press Association—Copyright) SAIGON, July 10. United States bombers today made, four raids on the Mekong Delta area, 25 miles south of Saigon, as part of an attempt to block a new drive against the city.

United States Army headquarters said the planes also twice bombed an area northwest of Saigon, near the Cambodian border. Both target areas are thought by United States commanders to be important hiding places and command areas for the expected new offensive. In Saigon, Government spokesmen said that suspected Viet Cong killed two Vietnamese civilians in Cholon, the Chinese sector, and a mine had exploded in a drainage canal wounding three other civilians.

South Vietnamese troops in the city’s northern fringes found still more weapons in a cache, spokesmen said. United States soldiers

found 12 Viet Cong bodies, killed by artillery, 12 miles north of the capital. On the northern front, United States marines today fended off North Vietnamese soldiers assaulting Hill 689 for the fifth successive day just west of the abandoned marine base at Khe Sanh. They put Viet Cong losses at 70 in the day’s fighting. Other marines pushing out from Con Thien on the Demilitarised Zone reported killing 15 troops and destroying a complex of 242 bunkers in which they found 1000 mortar rounds, 211 grenades, 55 mines and 26,000 rounds of small arms ammunition. American helicopters supporting South Vietnamese ground troops killed 30 Viet Cong in a battle near Phung Hiep, 18 miles east of Saigon, a South Vietnamese military spokesman said. After an air strike yesterday South Vietnamese forces combed the area and found the bodies of 30 guerrillas.

Five Viet Cong were captured and 20 suspects detained. Only one South Vietnamese soldier was wounded, he said. A child was killed and an old woman injured when Viet Cong fired mortars on Long Than, 18 miles east of Saigon last night, he said. A United States military spokesman said a Navy jet fighter-bomber from the Seventh Fleet carrier U.S.S. Ticonderoga shot down a North Vietnamese MiG-17 about 100 miles north of the buffer zone.