Military Region 9 completes 500-day campaign to identify fallen soldiers

Military Region 9 has concluded its ‘500-day campaign to intensify the search, collection, and identification of martyrs’ in the Mekong Delta region. In its 12th and final transport phase, military aircraft were deployed to move 8,453 biological samples for DNA testing to assist in identifying the fallen.

To date, the campaign has successfully collected 1,104 sets of remains, including 748 found within Vietnam and 356 belonging to Vietnamese volunteer soldiers and experts in Cambodia. This figure represents 122.66% of the 2026 target. Previous transport phases had already delivered 23,557 samples for forensic analysis.

The operation involved excavating 41,231 graves across 107 cemeteries. While the campaign concluded nearly seven months ahead of schedule, officials noted that many remains still lie undiscovered across the country and in neighboring lands.