Retreat from Laos nears end

Press, Volume CXI, Issue 32562, 23 March 1971, Page 13

Retreat from Laos nears end

/N2. Press Association—Copyright > SAIGON, March 22. The South Vietnamese retreat from the six-week incursion into Laos neared its end today under massive Communist counter-attacks, as the United States Command anounced that two of its 857 Canberra bombers had been fired on with surface-to-air missiles while on a strike mission over Laos. United Press International reported that the United States aircraft avoided the missiles during attacks on missile and anti-aircraft positions in North Vietnam yesterday in what military sources said were the heaviest raids over the North in six months.

The Associated Press reported that American blocking forces on the Vietnamese side of the Laotian border were drawn into sharp fighting and several United States positions and armoured columns came under Communist attack. Some South Vietnamese positions on both sides of the

border were reported under heavy attack, as were withdrawing troops. Field reports said that more than 100 rounds of Rus-sian-made 1001 b rockets slammed into a South Vietnamese Ranger command post at Phu Loc on the border, killing more than 70 Rangers and wounding more than 120. United Press International reported that South Vietnamese troops yesterday abandoned two more bases in Laos

and military sources said that the remaining 8000 to 10,000 still there would be pulled out as quickly as possible. The withdrawing South Vietnamese soldiers had only four bases left inside Laos by this morning, the deepest being less than eight miles from the South Vietnamese border, military sources said. Two battalions of troops pulled out of artillery base Delta I yesterday under heavy Communist attack, the sources said.

South Vietnamese spokesmen said the soldiers killed 245 North Vietnamese in bitter fighting that also left 52 Saigon troops dead and 80 injured.

South Vietnamese troopers also abandoned the artillery base, Alpha, seven miles inside Laos on Highway 9, military sources said. The base was the major headquarters for South Vietnamese armoured cavalry troops after the pull-out last week from A Luoi, another base.