Thai planes hit Hanoi troops—report

Press, 23 April 1984, Page 6

Thai planes hit Hanoi troops —report

NZPA-AFP Bangkok Royal Thai Air Force planes had fired rockets at Vietnamese positions inside Thailand after ground fighting had wounded 34 Thai troops, the “Bangkok Post” newspaper reported yester-

day. The report said that it was not clear whether the air strikes had dislodged the Vietnamese, who have been pursuing Khmer Rouge guerrillas based along the Thai-Kampuchean border. Nor did the report say when the air strikes occurred.

The Air Force was said to have gone into action against Vietnamese guns on the Thai slopes of a strategic hill in the Dongrak mountain range. The position, designated Hill 425, lies near a destroyed Khmer Rouge stronghold called Charat, opposite Thailand's Surin province, about 340 km north-east of Bangkok.

Vietnamese forces attacked Charat on April 14 at the start of a drive against scattered Kampuchean resistance enclaves along a

300 km front. On April 15, they shot down a Thai Air Force spotter-plane, which the Thais said fell nearby on the Thai side of the border.

Military officials in Bangkok were unable immediately to confirm the air strikes. The Governor of Surin said that he was unaware of any clashes between Thai and Vietnamese forces for the last three days. The “Bangkok Post” account said that the air strikes had come after fierce fighting which left 34

Thai soldiers wounded, 10 of them seriously. The Secretary of the Army, Major-General Naruedol Dejpradiyuth, was quoted by another newspaper as saying that the Army had sent more details of the fighting to the Foreign Ministry for a protest to be made.

So far the Foreign Ministry has lodged a formal protest with Hanoi over the downing of the unarmed plane, but has not referred to any incursion. Further south, forces of

the Khmer People’s National Liberation Front were reported to be still holding their positions on the eighth day of a Viet-namese-led siege of their headquarters, opposite Ban Sangae, north of the Thai town of Aranyaprathet. In another development Khmer Rouge radio reported that troops loyal to the former Prime Minister, Pol Pot, had seized Khemarak Phoumin, capital of Koh Kong province, about 15km from the southeastern tip of Thailand.