General Vo Nguyen Giap flown to Quang Binh province for burial

General Vo Nguyen Giap two-day state funeral is in its final stages inVietnam.

The general’s body is being flown from Hanoi, where it has been lying in state, to his home town in Quang Binh province for burial.

Thousands of people have paid their respects to Gen. Vo Nguyen Giap in Hanoi and at military centres across Vietnam.

Gen. Vo Nguyen Giap was the military commander credited with overseeing the defeat of French and US forces in his country.

He died a week ago at the age of 102.

In Quang Binh, workers have been rushing to finish his tomb ahead of the burial ceremony.

The site, a temple on a mountainside by a beach, has already attracted mourners.

However, the site is closed to the public until after the funeral.

The general’s coffin has been lying in state at the National Funeral Hall in Hanoi, draped in the national flag.

On Sunday, soldiers in white uniforms solemnly removed the flag and carried the red coffin from the hall while other soldiers, bearing a photograph of the general, preceded them.

In a carefully choreographed ceremony, the coffin was then placed on a gun carriage, the flag replaced, and a glass canopy lifted on top of it.

Gen Vo Nguyen Giap’s family, wearing black, stood nearby.

Thousands lined the route to the airport where the coffin was to be flown to Quang Binh.

The son of a rice grower, Vo Nguyen Giap became active in politics in the late 1920s and worked as a journalist before joining Ho Chi Minh’s Indochinese Communist Party.

He helped Ho Chi Minh found the Viet Minh and his defeat of French forces at Dien Bien Phu in 1954 effectively ended French colonial rule in the region.

Gen. Vo Nguyen Giap was North Vietnam’s defense minister at the time of the Tet Offensive against US forces in 1968, often cited as a key campaign that led to the Americans’ withdrawal.

It has been more than 30 years since Gen. Vo Nguyen Giap held any position of power within the Vietnamese Communist Party.

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