Chinese battle Hanoi forces

Press, 7 December 1985, Page 11

Chinese battle Hanoi forces

NZPA-AFP Bangkok Vietnamese troops killed 470 Chinese soldiers intruding into Vietnam’s northern border province of Ha Tuyen on Monday, the Vietnam News Agency reports.

Chinese forces had launched “regiment-sized land-grabbing attacks on some hills” in Ha Tuyen’s northernmost border district of Vi Xuyen under cover of heavy artillery fire.

V.N.A. had accused China on Tuesday of having fired 34,900 shells into the area the previous day, launching five attacks against three Vietnamese positions 20 km north-west of the Ha Giang provincial capital. V.N.A. said that Chinese troops on Tuesday and

Wednesday had fired another 24,700 artillery shells on 19 areas in Vi Xuyen, including on a village only 6 km away from Ha Giang.

Vietnam and China have regularly traded accusations of responsibility for armed clashes along their border since the two former allies fought a war early in 1979 after Hanoi’s overthrow of the pro-Peking Khmer Rouge regime in Kampuchea.

The resurgence of tension along the China-Vietnamese border since the last clashes in late September, coincide with the expected launching of an annual dry-season offensive by Vietnamese troops against Chinesearmed Kampuchean resistance guerrillas, observers in Bangkok say.