Word: mekong
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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Despite such daily scenes of horror, the besieged Cambodian capital of Phnom-Penh held out for another desperate week. The Khmer Rouge insurgents kept up their asphyxiating pressure on the city's Mekong River lifeline, thereby depriving the capital of crucial supplies and diverting large numbers of government troops from the city's defense. Sosthene Fernandez, the Vietnamese-Filipino commander in chief of government forces, stoutly insisted that "we can open the river," but the chief of naval operations, Admiral Vong Sarendy, conceded that the situation on the Mekong was "hopeless." Meanwhile, the capital's sole maintaining...
...fifth year in a row, Khmer Rouge insurgents have mounted a dry-season offensive against the Cambodian capital of Phnom-Penh, strangling the city and blocking its vital Mekong River supply line. Once again there are widespread predictions that Phnom-Penh is on the verge of collapse-and with it, the U.S.-backed government of ailing President Lon Nol. Whether or not it falls, there is no question that the situation is more desperate than ever before. The Cambodian forces have already exhausted the $275 million in U.S. military aid they were granted this year and have scant hope...
Even though Phnom-Penh was subjected to daily rocket attacks last week, the Lon Nol government seemed blindly optimistic about holding out, apparently convinced that the U.S. will somehow pull it through. But there was little reason for confidence. Along the Mekong River, the government's position has steadily deteriorated. Instead of regaining some of the strategic river positions, as they had planned, loyalist troops have lost much of the ground they retook in late January and in the process have suffered heavy casualties. Some battalions were wiped out completely. Others returned with as few as a dozen...
Smashing Chinese Faces. Part of the government's dilemma is that it lacks the troops to defend Phnom-Penh and at the same time reopen the Mekong, a critical problem that would not be solved by the receipt of more military-aid funds from the U.S. Cambodian forces around the capital are already spread dangerously thin, the result of the nearly total destruction of a division in that area during this year's fighting. The high command feels it should not risk taking any soldiers away from Phnom-Penh; yet the river must be reopened to convoys...
...artillery and rocket fire for seven straight weeks. Somehow the city survived. Last week, it was once again hunkering down for another brutal assault. The insurgent forces, who now control most of Cambodia outside the major cities, are currently concentrating their attacks on Neak Luong, a small but vital Mekong River shipping channel 32 miles southeast of the capital. But there are daily rocket attacks in and around Phnom-Penh, and it is only a matter of time, perhaps days, before the full-fledged siege gets under way. All river traffic has been cut off. Rice supplies are running extremely...