VICTORY" AT DONG HOI
Since President Johnson ordered the bombing of Dong Hai in North Vietnam on February 7, world opinion has been preoccupied primarily with the military and political consequences of that action. Will American aggression "escalate" mankind into nuclear war? Where does the responsibility lie for this reckless adventure? What will be the Kremlin's reaction?
These and similar questions have been asked everywhere in the world. But one minor question was not given much attention in the world press. What did the bombing of Dong Hoi accomplish? Were there any victims? Were only “military objectives" wiped out, as the American newspapers claim?
A journalist who happened to see the bombing -- he reached Dong Hoi a few hours before the attack -- has provided an eyewitness
account. The journalist is Franz Faber of the daily Neues Deutsch~ iand, official organ of the East German Communist party. While. many of t the reports appearing in this paper must be taken with a great deal of caution, there is no reason to doubt the accuracy of this account.
According to Faber, nearly all the victims of the bombing -the dead and wounded ~-- were children. In the nearby town of Vinh -Linh, a bomb scored a bull's eye on a school, killing many of the children outright.
The office of the International Control Commission in Dong Hoi was also hit,
Many helpless fishing boats in the mouth of Gianh River, which enters the South China Sea near Dong Hoi, were caught without warning in gun and rocket fire.
Faber reports that no military objectives were hit, but many homes, schools and even hospitals were destroyed.
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