On November 5, Military Region 7 held a conference to review its 2026 operations in searching for, recovering, and identifying the remains of fallen soldiers with missing information, as well as to summarize Phase 1 of the "500-Day Campaign to Accelerate the Search, Recovery, and Identification of Fallen Soldiers' Remains."
Over the past months, the Military Region 7 Steering Committee established three ad-hoc recovery teams, 70 teams tasked with sampling, digitizing, preserving, transporting, and handing over biological specimens, along with four field-monitoring teams.
As of November 3, the military region had searched for and recovered 1,795 sets of remains of fallen soldiers in Vietnam and Cambodia, exceeding the Phase 1 target by 99.44 percent. The military region completed, nine months ahead of schedule, the collection of 30,649 biological samples eligible for DNA testing across all 58 martyrs' cemeteries.
It also transported and handed over 31,015 samples, including 366 from newly recovered remains. Additionally, the unit received more than 1,000 pieces of information regarding fallen soldiers, reviewed initial burial records of over 305,000 soldiers, and progressively standardized and digitized these records.
Delivering directive remarks at the conference, Senior Lieutenant General Nguyen Van Gau, Deputy Minister of National Defense and Deputy Head of the National Steering Committee for the Search, Recovery, and Identification of Fallen Soldiers' Remains, commended Military Region 7's Steering Committee for its achievements and praised the awarded collectives and individuals.
He emphasized that 2027 will be the decisive phase to achieve the campaign's overall targets, leading up to the 80th anniversary of War Invalids and Martyrs' Day (July 27, 1947–July 27, 2027).
On this occasion, Military Region 7 commended 48 collectives and 92 individuals for outstanding achievements in the 2026 search, recovery, and identification tasks and Phase 1 of the "500-Day Campaign." Among the honorees was one collective and one individual from Sai Gon Giai Phong (SGGP) Newspaper.
![1793854840909-5089444651203917330-5089444651203917330-c47d0f3a62fd841943d9b50d7b86df30-7325-8915.jpg](https://image.sggp.org.vn/w1000/Uploaded/2026/zfuswurkxr/2026_11_06/1793854840909-5089444651203917330-5089444651203917330-c47d0f3a62fd841943d9b50d7b86df30-7325-8915-6155-3925.jpg "Colonel Nguyen Dinh Chuan, Deputy Political Commissar of the Ho Chi Minh City Command, shares the city Steering Committee's experiences and lessons learned during Phase 1 of the "500-Day Campaign." (Photo: SGGP)")
