HANOI (AFP) — Vietnam on Friday marked 40 years since the Tet Offensive with colourful military parades of its veterans and re-enactments of the surprise wave of urban assaults that marked a turning point in the war.
Communist Party leaders and military chiefs watched as former guerrillas and regular soldiers filed past Ho Chi Minh City's Reunification Palace, formerly the presidential palace of the US-backed Saigon regime ousted in 1975.
Youths in black Viet Cong pajamas with models of AK-47 assault rifles and rocket launchers joined the parade, as did women carrying fruit baskets on shoulder poles, recalling the way arms and bombs were smuggled into the city.