A resident of central Quang Binh Province has discovered thousands of human bone pieces that are believed to be of the victims of massacres by the French colonists.  The resident was digging the ground for building a home foundation.

A digger and human bones found in Quang Binh’s garden. 

Duong Van Phong, a resident of Ba Don District’s Quang Tho Ward, said he started digging the soil on May 19 and kept finding human bones underground since then. 

He tracked the bones, dug around his garden and found a total of 200 sets of human bodies by May 28.

Phong’s digging has continued since.

Phong said the bones were broken and in a mess; the pieces of a single body were hardly identifiable. He counted the skulls to determine the number of human bodies.

Phong collected the bones and took them to be reburied in a local cemetery. At the same time, he took samples and sent them to Hanoi to be tested for DNA.

The bones were discovered at five sites in the garden. The elderly in the locality believed that the bones belonged to the revolutionists of the Can Vuong Movement against the French colonists.

The movement was an insurgency by the Vietnamese, led by the emperor Ham Nghi, between 1885 and 1889 against French colonialism. The movement was raided by the French, and many revolutionists were killed either in Quang Binh or Quang Tri.

Local authorities have yet to comment on the information. 

VNS