Vietnam dead returned to US
2004-10-18 09:59
Hanoi - The remains of five Americans killed during the Vietnam War were handed over to US authorities on Monday for repatriation and identification, the US embassy in Vietnam said.
A formal ceremony was held at Hanoi's Noi Bai airport and the remains were then loaded onto a US Air Force C-141B Starlifter cargo airplane.
Remnants of the decomposed bodies were recovered between June 25 and July 27 by members of the US Joint POW/MIA Accounting Command and Vietnam's missing personnel office.
The remains were to be flown to JPAC's Central Identification Laboratory in Hawaii for forensic testing and identification, US embassy spokesperson Lou Lantner said.
Vietnam and the United States have cooperated since 1986 to determine the fate of Americans missing in action from a conflict that claimed more than 58 000 American and an estimated three million Vietnamese lives.
Around 1 850 Americans are still missing in Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia and China, while the remains of more than 700 have been recovered.
In June, Vietnam agreed to open up its national archives to help US efforts to account for its missing in action.
The following month the government agreed to allow US search teams access to the sensitive Central Highlands region after a three-year hiatus due to local unrest.
More than three million Americans served in Vietnam during the war, which spanned most of the 1960s and continued until the fall of Saigon in 1975.