Vietnam says finds french colonial era mass grave
HANOI - A grave containing the bodies of 17
Vietnamese prisoners killed by French forces during the
country's fight for independence in the 1940s has been
unearthed in southern Vietnam, an official newspaper reported
on Friday.
The state-run Vietnam News quoted Vo Van Thu, chairman of
the Luong Hoa Lac Commune People's Committee, as saying
that one of the skeletons found there had its arms bound with
telephone wire.
The paper said the grave was unearthed in the hamlet of An
Lac in the Mekong Delta province of Tien Giang, south of Ho
Chi Minh City, after a tip-off by witnesses to the executions.
It said the witnesses maintained that the 17 had been killed
by French colonial forces on April 26, 1948, in retaliation for
the deaths of one French and one Moroccan officer in a
skirmish with Vietnamese independence fighters.
France's colonial rule of Vietnam ended in 1954, after its
forces were defeated by Ho Chi Minh's Viet Minh
independence fighters at the battle of Dien Bien Phu.
Reuters - November 22, 2001.
|