Word: phnom
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...Force Reservists, have orders not to discuss their work. They work for five different private airlines operating in Southeast Asia, and they work for fairly low wages. For the last month, these men have been getting up every morning and boarding DC-8 cargo transport lets bound for Phnom Penh. The planes flying south from Thailand carry nearly 600 tons of ammunition a day to loyalist forces in Cambodian capital. Or so it seems. Early this week the UPI reported that on Feb. 27 Lon Nol ordered distribution of all rise rations to be restricted to government soldiers...
That news, if true, can only mean more terror for the two million residents of Phnom Penh. Since 1971--when Nixon decided to send American troops on an "incursion" into Cambodia to break NLF supply lines to South Vietnam--Cambodia has been sliding deeper into war. The struggle there between the Khmer Rouge revolutionaries and the troops of the Lon Nol regime has reached a crisis. The Khmer Rouge have the capital city surrounded, with all land and water approaches cut off and they are shelling the city now from an four sides. According to reports in the western media...
...most civil wars, the war in Cambodia has been particularly brutal for civilians. Businesses in Phnom Penh have shut down for want of customers and for fear of rocket attacks in parts of the city. The city's hospitals are over-crowded with civilians suffering from shelling, disease, and starvation. As of this week, there are not even any ambulances available to transport wounded and dying civilians to the hospitals. Children scour the city's streets and dumps looking for enough food to stay alive; merchants are selling off what remains of their inventories. A fear has taken hold...
What is clear, though, is that the Khmer are fairly independent. They have a long-standing feud with the Vietnamese and they are apparently angry with the Soviets for maintaining an embassy in Phnom Pehn after the coup and they include as members both nationalists and communists. One other thing is certain: they would crush Lon Nol in a matter of weeks if the airlift is stopped...
...year ago this month, in one of the worst battles of the war, Communist-led Khmer insurgents pounded the Cambodian capital of Phnom-Penh with 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...