Word: phnom
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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...
...charged with guarding Route 1, together with Cambodian troops, managed periodically to pry open enemy roadblocks on some of the routes. But the Viet Cong and North Vietnamese troops, using their familiar hit-and-run tactics, often closed them down again a few miles away. Most residents of Phnom-Penh unconcernedly continue their daily lives at the normal slow and smiling pace. They are intrigued by all the newly visible artifacts of war, and many have taken to wearing pieces of military gear-anything from Red Chinese garrison caps to American cartridge belts -but are almost wholly unprepared for real...
...Communists' threat to Cambodia's present government presents a dilemma for almost everyone involved in the Indochinese war. South Vietnamese President Nguyen Van Thieu has said that a Communist regime in neighboring Phnom-Penh would be "intolerable." The anti-Communist government of Thailand would be scarcely less horrified by such a prospect. When Richard Nixon ordered U.S. troops into the border sanctuaries in eastern Cambodia on April 30, he warned that the Communist occupation of all Cambodia "would mean that South Viet Nam was completely outflanked and the forces of Americans in this area as well...
Reign of Chaos. The Communists can choose between two basic methods to carry out their strategy. One is to continue their stranglehold on the capital's sources of food and outside supplies, hoping that the regime will cave in from chaos and panic. The other is to attack Phnom-Penh directly, either to occupy it permanently or to force its destruction by provoking South Vietnamese bombing raids or other counterattacks. Either result, says a Western diplomat in Phnom-Penh, would be a double victory for the Communists. His reasoning: "The Communists think they will prove that the sanctuary operations...