Word: mekong
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...signs of crisis are clear enough. The leafy green capital of Phnom-Penh, its population swelled to 1,500,000 by some 400,000 refugees from the fighting, remains cut off from most of the country. Two convoys of ships from South Viet Nam managed to slip up the Mekong River through heavy Communist gunfire (see next story). About 400 trucks carrying food supplies arrived safely from Kompong Som, on the western seaboard. The blockade has technically been broken, but it may take weeks to determine whether the Communist offensive has been turned back...
...months, and the capital's central market is well stocked with imported goods, fruits and vegetables. But there is only enough diesel fuel to power the city's water system for 19 days, and the electricity supply is dependent on the arrival of further convoys up the Mekong. The airlift announced by the U.S. this week is limited to JP4 jet fuel for the Cambodian air force's tiny fleet of about 20 helicopters...
Phnom-Penh, the Cambodian capital, lay encircled by Communist forces. All five highways leading to the city were under siege, and three outposts along the road to the provincial capital of Takeo had been lost. More important, the Communists had severed, for the moment at least, the vital Mekong River supply route from South Viet Nam. A convoy of about a dozen ships, already ten days overdue in the Cambodian capital, was delayed in the Vietnamese port of Vung Tau while the Cambodian armed forces and U.S. bombers tried to clear the riverbanks of enemy rocket launchers...
...Windows rattled, and the whole capital literally shook last night as bombs fell on Communist emplacements to the southeast along the Mekong River," TIME Correspondent Gavin Scott reported from Phnom-Penh. "Sleepless residents of the Le Phnom Hotel moved to rooms on the north side in search of peace and quiet. One marveled, 'This must be the only hotel in the world where you have to change your room because of B-52 raids...
...maintain a professionally neutral posture despite their Western sponsorship, and the Poles and Hungarians, who invariably favor the Communist side, nearly all ICCS teams suffer a built-in paralysis. TIME Correspondent Barry Hillenbrand visited one ICCS team last week in Tri Ton, a small town in the Mekong Delta. His report...