Viet Cong raid on bomb dump

Press, Volume CXII, Issue 33100, 15 December 1972, Page 11

Viet Cong raid on bomb dump

(N Z.P.A.-Reuter—Copyright) SAIGON, December 14. The Viet Cong rocked Saigon today by blowing up thousands of tons of explosives in South Vietnam’s largest ammunition dump only six miles east of the capital.

Military sources report that Communist commandos penetrated the barbed-wire perimeter of the Thanh Tuy Ha munitions storage area near the village of Cat Lai late last night, and apparently left delayed-fuse satchel-charges behind them. First reports say that several South Vietnamese soldiers were wounded by the explosions, which began two hours before dawn and continued at intervals for eight hours. Saigon residents heard a steady, distant rumble, punctuated by giant explosions, shock waves from which smashed several shop windows and sent people scurrying for shelter in fear that! the city was under rocket attack. The worst explosions are! believed to have occurred i when spreading fire reached large mounds of bombs. A South Vietnamese officer)

in a deep underground bunker at Cat Lai said by telephone that thousands of tons of explosives were exploding. The officer’s family was with him in the bunker, and he said: “The children are crying. The noise is deafening.” The attack is likely to prove the worst in terms of material damage so close to Saigon during the latest North Vietnamese offensive, launched on March 30. The explosions turned the early-morning sky over Saigon to orange, and silhouetted ammunition barges on the Saigon River near Cat Lai. The barges are off-loaded near the village, and their ! ammunition cargoes a'e I stored there before being shipped to other parts of the country. ; Reporters were not allowed near Cat Lai this morning. d South Vietnamese soldiers fired shot? into the air to turn them away.