U.S. jets to join build-up in Korea

Press, 21 August 1976, Page 1

U.S. jets to join build-up in Korea

NZPA-Reuter Panmunjom. Korea The United States has sent supersonic lighters and bombers to South Korea, and United States and North Korean troops have been put on alert amid growing tension over the axe-killing of two American officers. North Korea has accused the United States of “kindling the blasting fuse of war.” The United States has accused North Korea of "deliberate murder." A Defence Department spokesman in Washington said the 36 planes sent to Korea were “a precautionary measure." The spokesman said some 36 planes, including Phantom jet fighters and Fill swing-wing fighterbombers, had been sent from Okinawa to strengthen the three squadrons of F4s already there. The planes sent from Okinawa had already arrived, and a squadron of Fills were being sent from Mountain Home air force base, Idaho, the spokesman said. The special alert cancelled leaves and passes for the 42,000 American soldiers and airmen in South Korea in a state of readiness midway between peacetime and wartime status. The United States, disclosing more details of the

axe attack, has told the United Nations Security Council that one North Korean officer had carefully taken off his wristwatch and put it in his pocket before the attack. The report also said another of the North Koreans had shouted

“Kill” as he approached the commander of the United States group at Panmunjom on Wednesday The details of the incident were in the report which the United States Ambassador (Mr Taplcv Bennett) handed to the Security Council’s Pre<-> dent (Mr Isao Abe. of

Japan) at the Japanese mission to the United Nations, on behalf of the United Nations Command The North Korean troops killed Captain Arthur Bonifas. and Lieutenant Mark Barrett with axes and clubs in an incident inside the truce zone between the two Koreas

Four other American soldiers and five South Korean soldiers were injured. Bonifas and Barrett were the forty-ninth and fiftieth Americans killed since the Korean armistice was signed in July, 1953. “This was not the eruption of an unplanned argument,” said General Richard Stilwell, United States commander in Korea, in a protest to North Korea “It was the deliberate murder of United Nations Command personnel, who. while engaged tn routine maintenance functions of a type your personnel often perform, were attacked mercilessly by a numerically superior force wielding axes and clubs "