April 15, 2008	Tuesday	Rabi-us-Sani 8, 1429

HANOI: The United States on Monday repatriated human remains believed to be those of American soldiers killed during the Vietnam War, the US embassy said.

The remains were to be sent to Hawaii for formal identification, the embassy spokeswoman said in Hanoi.

At this stage, “it is not possible to identify how many individuals it might be,” she said, adding that the remains were found at three different sites in central Vietnam.

Vietnam and the United States have cooperated since 1986 to determine the fate of missing troops from a conflict that claimed more than 58,000 Americans and an estimated three million Vietnamese lives.

According to the US embassy, the remains of 883 Americans who died during the “war in Southeast Asia” have been identified since 1975, including 627 from Vietnam.

Some 1,763 Americans remain “unaccounted-for,” including 1,353 in Vietnam.—AFP