A mass grave containing the remains of 35 communist commandos
killed during the Vietnam War was found in southern Vietnam,
a military official says.
The soldiers were rounded up and killed by South Vietnamese
forces after attacking a US air base in Vinh Long province
during the Tet Offensive in 1968, said Col. Vo Hieu Hoa of
the provincial military command.
Authorities were tipped off about the mass grave by a former
driver for the US-backed South Vietnam government, Hoa said.
"We finally found them after three days of excavation," he
said.
Thousands of Viet Cong guerrillas attacked major towns across
southern Vietnam during the Tet Offensive in January 1968.
Tet is seen by many as a turning point in the Vietnam War.
Meanwhile, the apparent remains of three American soldiers
killed during the Vietnam War were sent back to the United
States, US official Ron Ward said Monday.
The remains were recovered over the past month from sites in
central and southern Vietnam. They were flown aboard a
military transport plane to Hawaii on Saturday for
identification.
Nearly 1800 US servicemen are still unaccounted for
throughout Southeast Asia since the end of the Vietnam War in
1975, when communist North Vietnamese forces overran Saigon,
the capital of South Vietnam.
An estimated 3 million Vietnamese and 58,000 Americans were
killed in the war.
