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| Military officials look at objects found in the excavation on Tam Đảo mountain. - VNA/VNS Photo Quân Trang |
Viet Nam News
HÀ NỘI — It was too soon to confirm the remains found on Tam Đảo mountain belong to pilots who went missing 47 years ago, according to forensic experts.
Four days after the excavation of two skeletons which were initially believed to be of a Vietnamese pilot and his Soviet trainer, the Military Institute of Forensic Medicine announced its findings on Monday evening, and they were rather disappointing.
The institute’s chairman Colonel Nguyễn Văn Hòa said that it was extremely difficult to run forensic tests on the remains, which were nearly 50 years old.
Forensic examiners would have to determine the bone structure of the remains and if the bones still have enough DNA material for extraction. A DNA analysis would then be carried out in Hà Nội, Hòa said.
However, preliminary forensic tests run at the Thái Nguyên Province Military Command, which was in charge of the excavation showed that no bone structure was found in the remains.
“Hence it is unable to move to the next forensic steps,” Hòa said.
A search team from the Thái Nguyên Military Command on Friday last week discovered two skeletons at the site of a suspected plane crash about 130m from the peak of Tam Đảo mountain. They were thought to be the Vietnamese pilot Công Phương Thảo and his Soviet trainer Yuri Poyarkov who went missing in a MiG-21U jet fighter during a training session in the mountainous area on April 30, 1971.
Some pieces believed to be from the downed aircraft were handed to the Việt Nam Air Force for analysis.
The military was expanding its search in the area. — VNS
