[Vietnamization: military] Vietnamese remains found in Kep

Vietnamese remains found in Kep

Khmer Times | 3 January 2017

The remains of three Vietnamese soldiers were found in Kep province’s Prey Thom commune last Thursday and were returned to Vietnam on Friday.
 

Provincial police chief Major General Ung Sam Ol said the remains dated back to the civil war. They were found by farmers digging in the soil on their pepper plantation and the Cambodian military worked with their Vietnamese counterparts to verify the remains. “The skeletons have been buried for a long time, since the war era, and they were almost decayed,” Maj. Gen. Sam Ol said.
 

According to the Defense Ministry, in 2016 researchers from Vietnam and Cambodia managed to find and repatriate 720 sets of remains belonging to Vietnamese soldiers stationed in Cambodia between 1979 and 1989.
 

The ministry gave a detailed list of where the remains were found, dividing them into the military’s regional system.
 

In the special military region around Phnom Penh, 46 sets of remains were found. Region 1, covering the northeast section of the country, had 47 sets of remains.
 

For the southeast-covering Region 2, 209 sets of remains were found. Region 3, which is in the southwest part of the country, had 118 sets of remains. Military regions 4 and 5, covering the northwest section of the country, had 154 remains and 146 sets of remains respectively.