Phnom Penh kept awake by heavy bombing

Press, Volume CXI, Issue 32797, 23 December 1971, Page 13

Phnom Penh kept awake by heavy bombing

(Neto Zealand Press Association) PHNOM PENH, December 2?. The sound of exploding bombs kept many of Phnom Penh’s one-and-a-half million residents awake most of last night as allied planes kept up their bombardment of a suspect enemy troop concentration in the Vihear Suor Marshes, to the east of the city.

North Vietnamese or Viet Cong are said to be massing around the village of Prek Toch, 12 miles from central Phnom Penh, in the marshes on the eastern bank of the Mekong River.

However, this morning the Cambodian High Command said that there was no indication that a serious attempt was under way from the Communists to reopen the Vihear Suor front, the scene of bitter fighting at the beginning of this year’s monsoon season.

The enemy already is operating within sight of the capital’s western and northwestern city limits. Last night’s bombardment was one of the heaviest night attacks heard in Phnom Penh in the 20 months of the Cambodian fighting. North Vietnamese troops have begun a general offensive in Laos after their cap-

ture of the strategic Plain of Jars in the north, a Government spokesman said in Vientiane, the Laotian capital. MIG2I DEBUT According to informed military sources in Saigon, four United States Phantom jets lost at the week-end were flying missions in support of Royal Laotian troops over the Plain of Jars.. These sources said that there was considerable concern in American quarters at the probable downing of at least one of the Phantoms by a North Vietnamese MiG2l, which in recent weeks has made a debut over Laotian skies. The appearance of North Vietnam’s Air Force over Laos may point to a new phase of the Indo-China conflict—to command the skies over Laos and more specifically over the Ho Chi Minh Trail to the south, through which North Vietnam sends its supplies for campaigns in South Vietnam and Cambodia.

1 Radio Hanoi on Monday night said that four captured American pilots had been shown to the foreign and North Vietnamese press in 1 Hanoi. The report said that , their planes were shot down i over North Vietnam.

' The United States ComI mand yesterday-reported that 1 852 bombers and other strike I aircraft continued to bomb i the Ho Chi Minh Trail and t flew combat missions supi porting the Royal Laotian forces.