Cambodia Slayings Send Many Vietnamese Fleeing

Most of the 20,000 ethnic Vietnamese living on Tonle Sap lake in central Cambodia have fled the country after last month’s massacres by Khmer Rouge forces, a U.N. official said Tuesday.

“There’s not many people of ethnic Vietnamese origin left on the lake,” said U.N. navy commander John Leighton.

In the most complete briefing to date on the exodus of Vietnamese, Leighton said more than 7,000 people had crossed the border into Vietnam.

Three thousand more were heading south from Phnom Penh toward the border, and a second group of about the same size was moving away from the Tonle Sap in the northwest toward Phnom Penh, he said.

The Tonle Sap flows into a tributary of the same name that feeds the Mekong River, a vital waterway linking Cambodia and Vietnam.

The Vietnamese villagers, many of whom have lived in Cambodia for generations, started evacuating their homes on the lake and nearby towns after at least 46 people were killed in two separate attacks on their fishing villages in March.

The U.N. Transitional Authority in Cambodia has blamed hard-line Khmer Rouge guerrillas for the atrocities, the worst attacks against an ethnic minority since the Khmer Rouge and three other factions signed a peace agreement in October, 1991.

Meanwhile, a U.S. military team came under fire in northeastern Cambodia and canceled its search for Americans missing from the Vietnam War, a U.S. official said.

Lt. Col. Charles Clayton, leader of the U.S. search group, said his 48-member team will return to the United States indefinitely because of safety concerns. None of the Americans was hit.

There was no evidence as to who was responsible for the Saturday night incident, which came during a surge in attacks on U.N. peacekeepers who are trying to implement the peace accord before national elections next month.

Five U.N. personnel have died and four were wounded over the past 11 days.