Word: phnom-penh
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...HEAVY guard of Cambodian soldiers crouched silently by their guns behind half-built sandbag fortifications at Phnom-Penh's Pochentong Airport. Army Jeeps revved noisily through the night, pausing at military checkpoints throughout the city's deserted streets. Then, at the first sign of light, the soldiers picked up work where they had left off the afternoon before: at the airport, around banks and government buildings, and on major street corners, they unrolled coils of American-made barbed wire and stacked up new walls of sandbags. Cambodia's capital was girding for attack...
...fight of its life. Daily strikes by Viet Cong and North Vietnamese troops throughout the country could no longer be considered just random harassment designed to wear out Cambodia's army. Instead, the Communists seemed to have embarked upon a new all-out strategy designed to strangle Phnom-Penh. Diplomats in Cambodia speculated that the Communists had decided to try to overthrow the Lon Nol government as quickly as possible -probably within six months...
Serious Setback. If that was indeed the Communist strategy, the tactic clearly was to cut off Phnom-Penh from outside sources of supplies and military aid. Last week the city was at times completely isolated on the ground, with all major highways and railroads closed down by Communist troops and blockades. The train route to Bangkok was severed when Communist troops halted two trains, one a heavily loaded freight, the other carrying passengers. They carried off 200 tons of rice, forcing the passengers to act as porters, then destroyed both locomotives with B40 rocket blasts. That line also runs through...
Untenable Position. To the southeast and southwest, other raids cut off Phnom-Penh from Kompong Som (formerly Sihanoukville), the country's only deep-water seaport and site of its sole oil refinery. As a result, the capital was down to about two weeks' supply of fuel. Another serious setback was the temporary severing of Route 1, which runs between Phnom-Penh and Saigon and is thus one lifeline to Cambodia's most likely source of quick military help. The only other surface route, the Mekong River, was still open, though ships were subject to scattered attacks from...
Died. Gerald Miller, 42, TV news reporter, whose body was found and identified last week; when the Jeep in which he was riding was bushwhacked May 31 by Viet Cong rocket fire, killing the Cambodian driver, an Indian cameraman and Reporter George Syvertsen 33 miles southwest of Phnom-Penh...