Video: 'Vietnam: A Television History - Cambodia and Laos [8/11]' (Operation Freedom Deal in 1973 at 37:07)

(Friday, February 9, 1973; during Operation Freedom Deal, part of the Vietnam War, part of the Indochina Wars and the Cold War) — The U.S. resumed the secret bombing of Cambodia today after the communist Khmer Rouge refused to respond to pro-U.S. President Lon Nol’s unilateral cease-fire after the Paris Peace Accord was signed on Jan. 28, 1973.

With the Khmer Rouge closing in on Phnom Penh, the United States resumed bombing of North Vietnamese military bases and supply routes (the Ho Chi Minh Trail) in Cambodia.

The U.S. Seventh Air Force had argued that the bombing prevented the fall of Phnom Penh in 1973 by killing 16,000 of 25,000 Khmer Rouge fighters besieging the city.

The bombing was part of Operation Freedom Deal, a United States Seventh Air Force interdiction and close air support campaign waged in Cambodia starting May 19, 1970, and continuing through Aug. 15, 1973, as an expansion of the Vietnam War, as well as the Cambodian Civil War.

Launched by U.S. President Richard Nixon as a follow-up to the earlier ground invasion during the Cambodian Campaign, the initial targets of the operation were the base areas and border sanctuaries of the People’s Army of Vietnam (PAVN) and the Viet Cong (VC).

As time went on most of the bombing was carried out to support the Cambodian government of Lon Nol in its struggle against the Khmer Rouge. The area in which the bombing took place was expanded to include most of the eastern one-half of Cambodia.

Most of the bombing was carried out by U.S. Air Force (USAF) B-52 bombers. While the effectiveness of the bombing and the number of Cambodians killed by U.S. bombing is in dispute, civilian fatalities were easily in the tens of thousands.

The Jan. 28, 1973, ceasefire in North and South Vietnam did not apply to Cambodia and Laos. Over the next six months, the U.S. would drop a larger tonnage of bombs on Cambodia than on Japan in World War II.