Remains of 731 killed in Vietnam War laid to rest after six decades in mass graves

Please refresh the page or navigate to another page on the site to be automatically logged inPlease refresh your browser to be logged in

Want to bookmark your favourite articles and stories to read or reference later? Start your Independent Membership today.

The remains of 731 people believed killed during the 1968 Tet Offensive have been buried in Ho Chi Minh City, nearly six decades after they died.

They were laid to rest at Ho Chi Minh City Martyrs’ Cemetery, in the city formerly called Saigon.

The bodies had been recovered from mass graves at Le Thi Rieng Park after more than three months of excavations.

Vietnamese Prime Minister Le Minh Hung attended memorial services at the park.

Thousands of mourners carrying white flowers lined the city’s roads on Wednesday as the remains were taken for burial.

Generations of Vietnamese families have spent decades searching for relatives who never came home from the war, hoping to recover their remains and give them a proper burial.

The Tet Offensive began on 31 January 1968, when North Vietnamese communist forces launched coordinated surprise attacks across South Vietnam during the Lunar New Year holiday, known in Vietnam as Tet.

It was one of the largest campaigns of the Vietnam War and sparked fierce fighting and heavy casualties, including in the southern capital Saigon.

There, communist fighters attacked the US Embassy, military installations and government buildings.

Hundreds of the dead were buried in mass graves during and after the fighting.

Although the communist forces suffered a military defeat, the offensive shocked Washington, undermined US public support for the war, and became a turning point in the conflict.

“The resultant conflict has changed the pattern of the war,” The Associated Press reported in February 1968.

The South Vietnamese government collected the bodies of communist fighters and civilians and buried them in mass graves during and after the fighting, according to Vietnamese government news.

The excavations at Le Thi Rieng Park, previously the site of Do Thanh Cemetery, began on 23 June.

Over the following weeks, excavators painstakingly unearthed bones and fragments, along with weapons, ammunition, military hammocks and personal belongings, said the Vietnamese government’s official news portal.

Among the finds was a wallet containing a faded military document bearing the name Huynh Van Quen.

It helped authorities identify one of the dead as a soldier from the 1st Long An Battalion, a communist unit that fought a fierce seven-day battle at Saigon’s Y-shaped Bridge.

Vo Huy Thinh, 70, was among the mourners and remembered watching bodies being buried there when he was 12. “The memory of that burial pit has stayed with me,” he told Vietnamese state media.

The search for the graves was helped by an Associated Press photograph.

For years, architect Nguyen Xuan Thang pored over photographs from the Vietnam War, searching for clues to the burial site’s location.

A breakthrough came when he found a colour photograph taken by an AP photographer on 12 February 1968, he told state media.

Its caption described three large burial trenches that each contained about 300 bodies.

The photograph shows two men carrying a body as two others look on.

Three boys stand nearby, one wearing shorts and a short-sleeved shirt and looking directly at the camera.

A water tower is visible in the background, providing a crucial clue to the site’s location.

Mr Thang told state media that he spent months riding his motorbike through Ho Chi Minh City, comparing old military maps with present-day landmarks, including the water tower.

His research was part of a nearly eight-year effort, from November 2018 to May 2026, involving his team and the military, which helped authorities narrow their search to the park.

Investigators worked with researchers, historians, journalists and witnesses to piece together the location of the mass graves.

They examined other wartime photographs, satellite images, military maps and archival records from Vietnam and abroad, comparing them with field surveys and accounts from people who witnessed the burials, said the Vietnamese government’s official news portal.

The recovery forms part of a nationwide 500-day campaign running through July 2027 to locate the remains of about 7,000 war dead and identify them.

More than half a century after the war ended in 1975, many Vietnamese families are still searching for relatives who never returned home.

The remains of about 175,000 Vietnamese soldiers have yet to be recovered, according to government figures.

Hundreds of thousands more lie in graves without confirmed identities.

Of the 731 sets of remains recovered in Ho Chi Minh City, 307 were found with personal belongings, according to state media.

“Due to the harsh conditions of war and the passage of time, we have been unable to identify the names, ages, or hometowns of the majority of the martyrs in this group,” said Nguyen Manh Cuong, who heads the city’s war dead identification efforts.

Samples have been sent to the Vietnam Academy of Science and Technology in Hanoi for DNA testing and comparison with samples from relatives.

Similar memorial and burial ceremonies will be held on Thursday in three other parts of Vietnam.

Please refresh the page or navigate to another page on the site to be automatically logged inPlease refresh your browser to be logged in