Vietnam fighting unabated

Press, Volume CXII, Issue 32902, 28 April 1972, Page 9

Vietnam fighting unabated

(N.Z.P.A.-Reuter—Copyright) - SAIGON, April 27. About 300 North Vietnamese troops backed by tanks fought Saigon forces near the embattled northern city of Quang Tri today as fresh fighting erupted below the Demilitarised Zone. Military sources said that Northern tanks were advancing on the city, the Government’s last major stronghold in the area.

Field reports said that three prongs, each consisting of about 100 North Vietnamese, were between three and five miles of the southwest boundary of the provincial capital. But they were being contained, by Government troops and tanks, the reports said. While the battle raged for Quang Tri, Communist forces closed in on the Central Highlands city of Kontum and piled fresh pressure on Government troops in the besieged town of An Loc, straddling the main road to Saigon.

A United States spokesman said that two of seven 852 bomber raids in Kontum province last night were against North Vietnamese troops 10 miles north and north-west of the city. Government troops retreating from mountain bases captured at the week-end, threw up a defence line at Vo Dinh, 11 miles north-west of Kontum.

But latest sightings indicated that two prongs of Northern troops had moved around the defences for what would seem to be an unimpeded advance on the city. Foreign doctors and nurses have already been moved from Kontum, leaving behind about 200 Montagnard hill tribe patients. A young New Zealand doctor who reached Saigon from Kontum last night said that medical staff there were told by the Americans that the Montagnards stood a better chance of survival if no foreigners were with them when the city was overrun.

The doctor described chaotic scenes at Kontum airport as Communist rockets crashed into the area when the medical team headed by an American missionary, Mr Pat Smith, was about to leave. Their aircraft left without them and they were rushed across the city in Jeeps, dodging rockets to catch helicopters to Pleiku. Military sources said the North Vietnamese heading towards Kontum so far ap-

peared to be without their tanks—which are held up by the flooded Dak Psi river and a blown-up road bridge. On the embattled northern front, first areas to be hit by Hanoi’s strike into the south last month, military sources said a field report that a North Vietnamese tank had been hit within a mile of Quang Tri city had not yet been confirmed. But Government forces claimed killing 92 North Vietnamese in clashes with several hundred northerners yesterday. In the south, North Vietnamese troops attacked a Government base at Hieu Thien, 37 miles north-west of Saigon for 12 hours yesterday, closing Highway 22 and cutting off Tay Ninn city near the Cambodian border. A nearby militia outpost was also hit. The main activity on the southern front was still centred on the besieged town of An Loc, 60 miles north of Saigon. Nearly 1600 rockets and mortar bombs crashed into the town yesterday and early]

r today, bringing the total r bombardment this week to . about 10,000 rounds. A relief column of para- • troopers trying to reach An 1 Loc was forced to dig in eight : miles south of the town to- ■ day after they came under ' heavy fire. - A South Korean military : spokesman today confirmed r field reports that Korean L troops had reopened the strategic An Khe Pass on the ’ road running across the ’ centre of South Vietnam be- ’ tween Pleiku and Qui Nhon ■ cities. After 16 days of bloody ’ fighting, mostly on a hill 1 dominating the pass, Tiger 1 Division troops killed 705 North Vietnamese and Viet ; Cong in exchange for 51 ' killed and 115 wounded, the 1 spokesman said. He quoted the Korean com- . mander in Vietnam, Lieuten-ant-General Lee Sae Ho, as , saying intelligence reports j showed Communist forces ( were regrouping and moving F down to the pass from Dakto and Kontum to the northI west. ; There are 38,000 South ’Korean troops in Vietnam.