Huge assault in Cambodia

Press, Volume CXI, Issue 32789, 14 December 1971, Page 17

Huge assault in Cambodia

(N.Z. Press Association—Copyright! SAIGON, December 13. Six thousand South Vietnamese troops began a land and air assault today against the Chup rubber plantation, an important North Vietnamese divisional headquarters in eastern Cambodia.

The assault was preceded by heavy bombing raids on the plantation, the largest of its kind in Indo-China, by American Stratofortresses. South Vietnamese paratroopers and rangers, spearheaded by a tank column, are advancing west along Highway No. 7 towards the plantation, and other troops are being landed by South Vietnamese helicopters. South Vietnamese intelligence officers say that one regiment of the North Vietnamese 9th Division and two regiments of the 7th Division are in the Chup region, with support and administrative troops, The assault, the first on the Chup plantation for a year, is a new phase of dry-season offensive by 25,000 South Vietnamese into eastern Cambodia, aimed principally at keeping North Vietnamese forces away from South Vietnam’s 3rd Military Region, which includes Saigon and 11 surrounding provinces and shares 231 miles of border with Cambodia.

Other objectives of the offensive are to disrupt North Vietnamese supply routes, and to destroy enemy base camps and war materials, to prevent the enemy from launching his usual dry-sea-son assaults against South Vietnamese bases. •

The French-owned Chup rubber plantation is 110 miles north-west of Saigon, 55 miles north-east of Phnom Penh, and 35 miles from the border along the strategic Highway No. 7, on the eastern banks of the Mekong River.

Chup, which covers 75 square miles, was the scene of bitter fighting during the initial allied incursions into Cambodia in May, 1970, and again last February, during

the height of the dry-season. The plantation and its latex factory have suffered heavy damage from American and South Vietnamese air attacks; it has virtually ceased production.

Viet Cong sappers yesterday made their first heavy attack on American ground troops for three months and a half inflicting casualties on half the troops manning a darkened hill outpost providing security for the harbour at Qui Nhon.

The number of Cambodian troops on the hard-pressed northern defensive perimeter of Phnom Penh has been doubled, and international flights from the city’s airport have been cancelled again after another Communist attack on it. Four battalions of Government troops advanced through the hamlet of Phoum Tanom yesterday to join the battered force of about 2000 Cambodians who have been trying for the last two weeks to dislodge Communist attackers from the perimeter. On Saturday, one battalion was forced to abandon a hill commanding the perimeter line and offering a fine site for gun emplacements overlooking the city.