Word: lon
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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Some have called the battle of Kompong Cham a dress rehearsal for the expected siege of Phnom-Penh. Others have said that it was a diversion to drain off the best of President Lon Nol's troops. Still others have insisted that it was a major insurgent effort in which the rebels were soundly beaten. Some or all of these theories may be true. What is certain is that it was another bitter round in a senseless...
...backed Khmer insurgents make their big move? Despite several weeks of concentrated assaults by American B-52s, the rebel forces had been able to move to within ten miles of the capital of Phnom-Penh prior to the deadline. Those sweeping advances suggested that the troops of Cambodian President Lon Nol, once they were denied the support of U.S. warplanes, would be hard-pressed to stave off a major enemy attack...
Last week more than 5,000 insurgents laid siege to a comparable force of government soldiers defending Kompong Cham, Cambodia's third largest city (peacetime pop. 125,000, now about 65,000), approximately 50 miles northeast of Phnom-Penh. Lon Nol vowed that he would not let Kompong Cham fall and dispatched Major General Sar Hor, the highly regarded Minister of Veteran Affairs, to take charge of its defenses. Nonetheless, the insurgents steadily advanced. Using American 105-mm. howitzers captured last month from fleeing government troops, they massively shelled the city, rendering Kompong Cham's airport useless. Government...
...Though Lon Nol threw several thousand fresh reserves into the battle, the rebels continued to move toward the city's limits. One government soldier, evacuated to a hospital in Phnom-Penh, moaned: "They just keep coming and coming." At a large textile factory just outside the town-which had been built for Cambodia by China-Lon Nol's troops fled under fire while the workers and managers remained behind, trying unsuccessfully to hold back the insurgent attacks. Inside the city itself, house-to-house fighting erupted around the central marketplace when rebel infiltrators suddenly surfaced. Using armored scout...
...world's best friend in the fight against U.S. imperialism. Whereupon Prince Sihanouk took to the floor and, without bothering with a microphone, began vigorously dissenting. "We fully respect the Soviet Union," he declared. "But one thing we cannot understand is why Moscow maintains diplomatic relations with the Lon Nol clique of traitors with whom we are fighting...