Kompong Thom shelled again

Press, Volume CXIV, Issue 33533, 14 May 1974, Page 13

Kompong Thom shelled again

CN.Z.P.A -Reuter—Copyright >

PHNOM PENH, May 13. President Lon Nol said on national radio and television programmes last night that four divisions of North Vietnamese troops were now fighting on Cambodian soil: three were attempting to capture the provincial capital of Kompong Thom, and the fourth was in the Parrot’s Beak border salient close to South Vietnam.

The High Command reports fighting three miles southwest of Kompong Thom, which is about 75 miles north of Phnom Penh and has been isolated since the early days of the war.

The city, swollen with tens of thousands of refugees, has

been under renewed shelling attacks for four days. Shells from captured American 105 mm howitzers exploded in the city, killing one refugee and wounding two others, only minutes before the Prime Minister (Mr Boret) arrived by air there yesterday. Insurgent pressure is also increasing again near the country’s only deepwater port of Kocnpong Som, about 120 miles south-west of Phnom Penh.

Travellers reaching Phnom Penh from Kompong Som by air last night said that thousands of refugees, many of whom had fled from the coastal town of Kampot when it was under attack earlier in the year, were carrying their meagre belongings from camps near the airport into Kompong Som.