Clash in Vietnam Causes Worst Casualties in Year

March 19, 1974

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SAIGON, South Vietnam March 18 (Reuters) — A 48hour battle for control of a key river crossing in the Central Highlands ended today, leaving the heaviest casualties since the Vietnam cease‐fire 14 months ago.

South Vietnamese officers from Ihe Highlands headquarters reported that 440 North Vietnamese soldiers had been killed in the fighting while Government forces lost 75 killed, 105 wounded and an unknown number of missing.

Fierce fighting flared up Saturday morning when North Vietnamese troops attacked with an artillery, mortar and. rocket barrage on Governmene ranger positions along a provincial road about 10 miles northeast of Kontum city.

“At this moment,” one of the officers said today, “nobody is actually controlling this stretch of road.

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The positions, lie close to the Dak Bla river over which, military sources in Saigon said, the North Vietnamese wanted to clear an infiltration route before the beginning of the monsoon rains in May.

A Vietcong spokesman in Saigon said that 230 South’ Vietnamese soldiers had been killed or captured while being “duly punished for encroaching upon the territory of the Provisional Revolutionary Government northeast of Kontum.”

The Government's Highlands headquarters said that about 1,500 South Vietnamese soldiers participated in the battle. Government air force planes made 64 strikes against the North Vietnamese, who were said to have fought with their 28th Regiment, based in Cambodia, and three demolition and in North Vietnamese forces were supported by long‐range guns, key weapons in their gains in the 1972 offensive. The North Vietnamese were believed to have Soviet‐made tanks in re serve in the mountainous ter rain.

The battle was the fourth major clash in the Central Highlands bordering Laos and Cambodia in 12 months. The three others, in Quang Duc, Kontum and Pleiku Provinces, were seen here as moves by the North Vietnamese to strengthen security for areas in which they were building roads and to sap morale in the Government army.