Repatriations: VN soldiers exhumed in Kampot

via CAAI News Media

Tuesday, 09 February 2010 15:02 Tha Piseth and Brooke Lewis

The remains of 68 Vietnamese soldiers who died during military campaigns in Cambodia were found last week in Kampot and Kep provinces, a local official said Monday, adding that, of the more than 1,400 bodies of Vietnamese troops repatriated from Cambodia in the last decade, most have been found in Kampot. Soth Yea, the deputy governor of Kampot province and a member of the Committee for the Search of Vietnamese Soldiers’ Remains, said the bodies of 1,062 soldiers had been found in the province since Vietnamese military search teams, assisted by the Royal Cambodian Armed Forces as well as local officials and villagers, began repatriation efforts in 2001. He said workers were often able to recognise Vietnamese soldiers by checking the tags on the remains after exhumation. He added that Cambodian villagers regularly help locate the often-unmarked graves.