Word: lon
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...attacks on the Cambodian capital have already killed an estimated 340 civilians and wounded another 800 since last December, the inevitability of a rebel ground attack on the city in the near future seems far from certain. Since the current dry-season offensive began, the forces of Cambodian President Lon Nol have blunted three separate attempts by the Communist-led guerrillas to drive into the capital...
...Lon Nol's forces outnumber the rebels by a ratio of at least 4 to 1, but the government troops are poorly paid and their commanders are often corrupt. Says one American expert: "There is no leadership. The army has no idea what to do." Moreover, the quality of the government's equipment leaves a bit to be desired. As one Pentagon official puts it: "The Cambodians are fighting with the biggest museum of junk you ever saw." Their air force, for instance, consists of 20 or so pre-Korean-War-vintage T-28 fighter-bombers...
Despite the shattering impact of the Insurgents' rocket and artillery assaults on Phnom-Penh, the fighting around the capital is basically deadlocked. Although Lon Nol has no realistic hope of driving the attackers away from his capital's doors, the Insurgents seem incapable of capturing the city before August, when the monsoon will force the suspension of most military activity...
Eight shells fell within the grounds of President Lon Nol's Chamcar Mon Palace, damaging shacks of the palace guard and killing eight. Other rounds came dangerously close to the U.S. embassy. Most of the shells impacted in a densely populated refugee area. Fanned by gusting winds, flames raced through flimsy wood-and-straw huts in a fire storm so intense that a huge pall of smoke almost blotted out Phnom-Penh's bright afternoon sun. The attack took a heavy toll: at least 140 dead, 200 wounded, more than 1,000 homes destroyed and 10,000 people...
...followed five weeks of almost daily shellings by Soviet-made 122-mm. rockets -less powerful than the howitzer rounds but still terrifying because they fall randomly. After one rocket crashed into the courtyard of the Lycée Descartes, which was luckily empty of children at the time, the Lon Nol regime closed all schools and imposed a dusk-to-dawn curfew...