SAIGON - A hand grenade exploded in a crowd of American soldiers fighting outside an enlisted men's club Saturday night at Tuy Hoa in Phu Yen Province, wounding 29 GIs, six requiring hospitalization, informed sources said here Monday.
The sources said the fighting was between members of a U.S. infantry unit and a U.S. ranger battalion.
It was not immediately known who threw the grenade or whether it exploded accidentally, the sources reported.
However, a witness interviewed in Tuy Hoa by telephone from Saigon Monday night said the fight which ended in the grenade explosion began as a racial clash between white soldiers from C Co., 75th Ranger Bn. and Negro soldiers from an infantry unit. He did not know which unit.
Sources said, the other unit was the 1st Bn., 22nd Inf.
The aviation group spokesman contradicted reports by sources in Saigon that Military Police had fired tear gas to break up the disturbance. A CS grenade set off by an unknown person emitted the gas just before the explosive grenade, described as a fragmentation grenade, the spokesman said.
The military police did not use tear gas, he said.
The picture presented by the spokesman and a soldier interviewed indicated a racial disturbance began in an E4 and below club. Between 40 and 50 soldiers then spilled onto both sides of the street outside the club, according to the GI who said he witnessed the events but who asked his name not be used.
He said after the angry soldiers had grouped outside the club, a red flare was fired from the group of Negro soldiers on one side of the street. "The red flare was the signal to start fighting," he said.
Fistfights followed and another flare went off, he said. The GI said he had just gone into a nearby service club building when lie heard the fragmentation grenade blast outside the EM club. A tear gas-like substance then started filling the service club nearby, the soldier said.