31 Killed in Terrorist Attack in Saigon

June 26, 1965 - At least 31 persons, including nine Americans, were killed last night when two terrorist bombs exploded at a riverboat restaurant in Saigon. Forty-nine others were injured by the blast.

The explosion occurred at the My Canh restaurant, aboard a boat tied to the riverbank near the U.S. Embassy. The blast involved a grenade and a land mine carefully timed to explode together. 

According to an account of the terrorist bombing given by the Vietnamese police, the grenade exploded first within the restaurant at the height of the dinner hour.

As the Americans and the South Vietnamese on the boat rushed for the gangplank to the shore, the mine exploded on the riverbank. Scraps of shrapnel found afterward indicated that the second device may have been a claymore mine, a type of directional explosive that scatters metal fragments in an arc.

American military policemen roped off the area and began carrying bodies off the restaurant.

The wounded included 11 Americans, 33 South Vietnamese, and five others. Five of the dead Americans were servicemen. At least two of the others were civilian Government employees. Eighteen South Vietnamese were killed, along with two French men and a woman and an unidentified Caucasian.

The terrorist blast was the latest in a series directed against areas frequented by Americans.

Last February, 23 American servicemen were killed when the Viet Cong bombed a military hotel at Quinhon. The bombing of the U.S. Embassy in March took 20 lives.

Support this project at patreon.com/realtime1960s