S. Vietnam Targets Under Heavy Fire Rats Stop Work

Press, Volume CIX, Issue 31986, 13 May 1969, Page 17

S. Vietnam Targets Under Heavy Fire

Rats Stop Work

(N. Z.P.A.-Reuter—Copyright) SAIGON, May 12. Viet Cong and North Vietnamese troops attacked 159 targets in South Vietnam last night and early today in what is believed to have been the heaviest single night of shelling and bombing since the war began.

An American military spokesman in Saigon, however, said that this heavy concentration of attacks did not necessarily herald a massive ground attack such as occurred at the beginning of the Tet offensive last year.

Thirteen people have been killed and nearly 100 wounded in the present wave of terrorist attacks which began five days ago on the fifteenth anniversary of the defeat of the French at Dien Bien Phu.

A Viet Cong who planted a plastic charge on a pedestrian footbridge at a busy intersection in Saigon was himself killed in the blast at dawn today. Six other people were injured.

A Vietnamese child was injured when a Viet Cong bomb shattered part of a petrol station half a mile from the heavily-guarded Presidential Palace.

The intensified attacks in the city, coupled with increased activity on the battlefield, may be a drive to mark the seventy-ninth birthday of the North Vietnamese President (Ho Chi Minh) on May 19, according to a South Vietnamese military spokesman.

In the province of Tay Ninh, Viet Cong gunners fired 300 mortar shells into an American landing zone, but casualties were light. Five civilians were killed

and 41 Injured when a Viet Cong bomb was hurled into a restaurant in the Mekong Delta city of True Giang.

Guerrillas fired 20 rocket shells into a hamlet in the northern province of Thua Thien, killing one person, in-

juring 42, and destroying a number of homes.

Three persons were injured when five rockets hit the nearby former imperial capital of Hue early today. Forty mortar shells hit the elite military academy in the central city of Dalat today, injuring four persons. Ground fighting has flared in the Central Highland provinces in the last 48 hours. In Paris, South Vietnam’s chief negotiator to the peace conference said yesterday that he had orders to open discussions with the Communists if they indicated that they were ready to get down to serious bargaining. Mr Pham Dang Lam, back in Paris after two weeks of consultations in Saigon, said: “Private or secret conversations still offer the best hope, in our view, of getting the Communists to put their cards on the table. “I have instructions to en-l gage in serious discussions with the other side if they want them.” He reaffirmed South Vietnam’s willingness to discuss with North Vietnam and the National Liberation Front stich issues as the exchange of prisoners of war, the reestablishment of the Demilitarised Zone separating North and South Vietnam, and the neutrality of Laotian territory. These issues were included in the Viet Cong’s 10-point “global peace plan” for Vietnam presented to the sixteenth plenary session of the talks last week.

They are among the points which both the United States and South Vietnam consider “worthy of further exploration” though simultaneous Communist demands for a unilateral American troop withdrawal and the setting up of a coalition government in Saigon have been rejected. “The Communist position now is to sweep away the present regime in Saigon, impose a provisional coalition government, followed by a definitive coalition, even before elections and without knowing the results in advance,” said Mr Lam. “Finally, even before these elections, they want to impose a policy of neutrality.”

The Iran Ministry of Health had to suspend work yesterday because of an infestation of rats and cockroaches in the building. The main target of the vermin was reported to be the family planning department—Teheran, May 12.