Fighting flares in South Vietnam

Press, Volume CXIV, Issue 33487, 19 March 1974, Page 13

Fighting flares in South Vietnam

(N.Z.P. A.-Reuter—Copyright)

SAIGON, March 18.

North and South Vietnamese troops have suffered more than 700 casualties in a Central Highlands battle which began three days ago and is still raging.

Government officers at the Highlands Command headquarters in Pleiku report that two North Vietnamese battalions, numbering nearly 550 troops, have been wiped out and that Government losses have been about 200 killed, wounded, or missing since the fighting began near the city of Kontum on Saturday morning.

The attack began with a heavy Communist barrage of rockets, mortars, and artillery shells bursting in and around Government outposts about 11 miles northeast of Kontum. Since then, the fighting has moved closer to the city, some Communist units having advanced far enough to shell a command post only two miles from Kontum. An unknown number of Government troops are out of contact with their command posts, and it is not known whetjier any South Vietnamese outposts have fallen.

A High Command officer in Saigon commented: "Economically and politically there is nothing in Kontum, but these are the heaviest casualties in a year, and we will have to wait to see whether it is the beginning of a Communist offensive for control in the Highlands.” '

The United States military commander in the Pacific (Admiral N. Gayler) has said that the North Vietnamese are refraining from a big attack on South Vietnam because of uncertainty about how America will respond. “They are poised to go. They’ve got the roads and the arms and the ammunition in place,” the admiral said in an interview with “United States News and World Report.”

“Only the uncertainty of. the American response helps to keep Hanoi from starting a major offensive,” he said.

Admiral Gayler rated the chances of an all-out North Vietnamese offensive this year at less than 50-50.

“American forces were ready to go if called upon,” he declared. “If the United States became involved in another big war in Vietnam, we should pursue what I think was the only successful strategy we had in SouthEast Asia: to disarm the Communists in North Vietnam.”

In South Vietnam, Command officers in Pleiku report by telephone that the North Vietnamese have moved at least two regiments into the battle-lines from their bases in the mountains where the borders of South Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia meet.

They are supported by heavy 130 mm Russian-made field' guns, and may have tanks drawn up in the jungled mountains north-east of Kontum.