France will repatriate "in the coming days" the remains of six soldiers who fell in Diên Bien Phu, in present-day Vietnam, where the last battle of the Indochina War took place in 1954, said the French Ministry of Defense. Armed Friday.  

“These are already known remains, kept in three different places”, which had been “reported to the French embassy in Vietnam in 2012, 2021 and 2022”, he specified in a press release.

The Vietnamese authorities gave authorization on March 25, and the exhumation of the remains took place the next day. “Tributes to the dead were paid by the Vietnamese and French authorities at each of the sites.”

After 56 days of bloody fighting, deluges of shells and hand-to-hand confrontations, the Battle of Diên Bien Phu ended on May 7, 1954, with the fall of the French entrenched camp. The battle sealed the end of the French presence in Indochina and the emergence of Vietnam as an independent nation.

4,000 dead on the French side

“The National Office for Combatants and Victims of War (ONaCVG) will be responsible for conducting anthropo-archaeological analyses” to try to identify the remains, the ministry said. The families of the deceased identified will be able to obtain the restitution of their remains, or opt for burial in a national necropolis. 

“One of the remains is accompanied by a surname plaque. The analyzes should make it possible to confirm its identity,” the press release specifies. The unidentified remains will be buried in the Indochina War Memorial necropolis in Fréjus.

“Yesterday as today, on our soil or elsewhere, it is the honor of France to always ensure perpetual burial for those who died for it,” declared Patricia Miralles, Secretary of State. to Veterans.

The decision of the Hanoi authorities to develop the Diên Bien Phu area and extend its airport to the site of the old battles, which left 4,000 dead on the French side, had led to predictions of the discovery of new bodies.

“Preventive archaeology” training was provided to site managers. But "since then, the French authorities have not been informed of the discovery" of new bodies of French combatants.

With AFP

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