Cambodian Rebels Await Major Push by Viet Troops

Rightist Cambodian guerrillas, preparing for an expected assault on their headquarters here, clashed Sunday with Vietnamese troops holding another major rebel camp that they overran on the Thai-Cambodian border.

The guerrillas of the Khmer People’s National Liberation Front, led by former Premier Son Sann, engaged in small-arms fighting late Saturday night and early Sunday for control of the camp at Nong Samet, situated inside Cambodia, 19 miles northeast of the Thai border town of Aranyaprathet.

Thai military sources said four of the Cambodian rebels were wounded but gave no estimate of Vietnamese casualties.

The Khmer Front is one of three loosely allied Cambodian rebel factions seeking to oust the Vietnamese-installed government of Heng Samrin in Phnom Penh. The others are the Communist Khmer Rouge, who governed Cambodia brutally from 1975 until their ouster by Hanoi in early 1979, and the Moulinaka, loyal to Cambodia’s deposed head of state, Prince Norodom Sihanouk.

The rebels at Ampil prepared for a full-scale Vietnamese assault, which many expect to come today. Such an attack has been anticipated since mid-November, when Hanoi’s troops launched their earliest and most intensive dry--season campaign of the six--year war.

Son Sonn, the rebel leader, visited this border encampment Sunday and said his men would hold firm against an assault. He added that the Vietnamese units facing Ampil are equipped with 40 to 50 Soviet-built T-54 tanks and M-113 armored personnel carriers.

Other guerrilla leaders said Hanoi has assembled at least 3,600 troops as close as 100 yards from the sprawling Ampil base.

Meanwhile, a leader of Sihanouk’s group charged that Vietnamese troops have used a choking but non-lethal green-colored gas against the guerrillas at Nong Samet. Paen Sorathee, an operations officer, said the Vietnamese have used gas at the camp at Nong Samet, known as Rithisen, since Dec. 27. His assertion could not be independently confirmed but is similar to U.S. charges that Vietnam has used poison gas in trying to defeat the rebels on the battlefield.