'Missing' US soldiers remains repatriated to Cambodia

ABC (Australia) | 2 April 2014

Photo: US soldiers carry a flag-draped coffin containing the remains believed to be of a US soldier during a repatriation ceremony at Phnom Penh International Airport on April 2, 2014. (AFP)

Map: Cambodia

The remains believed to be those of three American soldiers, who were killed in Cambodia during the Vietnam War, have been repatriated for identification in United States.

The US embassy in Cambodia said the remains were recovered by a team of Cambodians officials and members of the US Joint POW/MIA Accounting Command (JPAC) in the eastern province of Kampong Cham.

JPAC was established in 2003 after the US Department of Defense decided to amalgamate two major personnel recovery teams working on past wars and conflicts.

It is now tasked with searching for missing US personnel in Southeast Asia.

"A few days ago, a joint team of Cambodians and Americans completed their most recent mission and recovered the possible remains of Americans missing in Cambodia," said William Todd, US Ambassador to Cambodia, during a solemn repatriation ceremony at Phnom Penh airport.

"Today, we honour colleagues who died far from home and whom we never knew," he said, adding he hoped their return "will ease the pain" of the fallen's families.

The remains were carried in three separate coffins and draped in US flags.

They were flown on an American military plane bound for JPAC's Central Identification Laboratory in Hawaii.

There were no details on how the US military servicemen were killed.

The US embassy in Cambodia said 90 American soldiers were originally missing in Cambodia from the Vietnam War.

But 37 individuals had been recovered and identified since the two countries began cooperating in the search in 1992, while 53 others remain missing.

Around 3 million Americans served in Vietnam during the war, which spanned most of the 1960s and continued until the fall of Saigon (now Ho Chi Minh City) in 1975.

More than 58,000 Americans were killed.

In 1969 Washington began secretly bombing suspected communist base camps in Cambodia, which declared itself neutral during the war.

US ground troops were ordered into the country the following year.