Shelling From Inside Zone

Press, Volume CVIII, Issue 31836, 14 November 1968, Page 13

Shelling From Inside Zone

(N.Z. Press Association—Copyright) SAIGON, November 13. North Vietnamese troops firing from inside the Demilitarised Zone shelled an allied base along the frontier yesterday for the second time in three days, the United States Command said today.

A spokesman said that about 1.30 a.m. on Tuesday, Communist gunners fired 10 rounds of eight-millimetre mortar into a fire support base of the South Vietnamese

Ist Infantry Division, about four miles east-north-east of Con Thien, causing light casualties. The firing positions were determined by visual observation to be inside the southern half of the zone and United States Army and marine artillery was directed on to the Communist positions with unknown results, the spokesman said. On Sunday, North Vietnamese gunners fired from inside the southern half of the zone, attacked three United States Marine positions at and in the vicinity of Con Thien, killing four marines and wounding 40. These were the first North Vietnamese attacks from inside the zone since President Johnson halted the bombing of the north on November 1. United States bombers streaked into the southern half of the zone to attack the Communist firing positions on Sunday, and artillery also fired back at the Communist guns. The attacks from inside the zone raised the question as to whether Hanoi had actually agreed to stop using the six-tnile-wide buffer zone.