Mass Grave Found in Vietnam - Site of 1948 French Atrocity

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Thursday November 22 9:30 PM ET (via Yahoo)

Vietnam Says Finds French Colonial Era Mass Grave

HANOI (Reuters) - 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.
 
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