Vietnamese Overrun Khmer Rouge Bastion

Vietnamese troops and armor sweeping through the jungle behind a ferocious artillery barrage overran one Khmer Rouge stronghold today and seized part of another in the western Cambodia mountains, Thai military officers reported.

The Thai border commander predicted that the entire guerrilla complex would fall by Friday. A knowledgeable Soviet Bloc diplomat said it may be the “turning point of the war” that broke out after Vietnam invaded Cambodia and ousted Pol Pot’s communist Khmer Rouge regime in January, 1979.

With guerrilla forward defense lines shattered by three days of withering artillery fire, 13,000 Vietnamese troops surged from the south and east in a pincer movement that overwhelmed the Khao Din stronghold and captured half the guerrilla headquarters at Phnom Malai, said Col. Chettha Thannajaro, deputy commander of the Eastern (border) Field Force.

Could Be Over by Friday

The force commander said Vietnamese troops were within two miles of Phum Thmei, the Khmer Rouge showcase camp and reported operations center that Phnom Malai protected. Maj. Gen. Salya Sriphen said it could be over by Friday for the Khmer Rouge in the steaming, malarial enclave that juts like a tooth into Thailand.

Vietnam turned its guns on the communist Khmer Rouge in western Battambang province after overrunning bases of another guerrilla group, the non-communist Khmer People’s National Liberation Front. The two-pronged drive was designed to trap the guerrillas in the pocket with their backs to the border of Thailand’s Prachiburi province.