Construction work has stopped after a potential mass grave dating back to the American War was inside HCM City's Tan Son Nhat Airport.

Photos indicating the position of the mass graves found

Dong Nai provincial officials have been searching for the mass grave at Bien Hoa Airport for years and with the assistance of two US veterans, Bob Connor and Martin Strones, they found a mass grave of around 150 Vietnamese soldiers killed in the Tet Offensive in 1968.

The US veterans continued providing more documents about another grave of soldiers also killed in the Tet Offensive to the west of Tan Son Nhat Airport. This is also an on-going construction site for the registry centre for aircraft equipment and other facilities.

Nguyen Xuan Thang, head of the search team, said they had transferred the documents to the 7th Military Region Command. The documents had been sent to the Department of Policy and the Politburo to halt all constructions to search for the graves.

Suspected positions of the graves

Thang said he found two photos indicating the position of the mass grave but one was on the 1st day of Lunar January while the other is on the 2nd day. After having more information from the US, it is suspected that they are two graves. The US had dug a long grave to bury 157 soldiers in the west of the airport and there is another grave for 600 soldiers nearby.

In 1995, the local authorities had dug up a mass grave for 181 soldiers died in the Tet Offensives in Tan Son Nhat Airport which made Thang the question the real number of mass graves in the airport.

"We think the mass grave found in 1995 is the grave depicted in one of the photos. So there's still another grave inside," he said.

Le Minh Tan, head of the Department of Labour, Invalids and Social Affairs, said they were building documents to submit to the city people's committee and would work with other agencies to survey the field and search for the grave.

dtinews