Remains believed to be those of two American servicemen killed during the Vietnam War were placed on a plane in central Da Nang city on Wednesday and sent back to the United States to be identified.

The remains were headed to Hawaii for forensic testing.

One set of remains was recovered by joint excavation teams in central Quang Tri province over the past month and the other was handed over by Vietnamese citizens, AP news agency quoted Ron Ward, a spokesman for the US Joint POW/MIA Accounting Command detachment in Hanoi, as saying.

Ward said one set of remains is believed to belong to a member of ground forces, while the other could be of a serviceman who died in a helicopter crash.

The United States and Vietnam have been working together to account for missing US servicemen since the 1980s. Some 642 remains have been repatriated and identified so far in Vietnam, according to the US MIA office.

Nearly 1,800 US servicemen are still unaccounted for throughout Southeast Asia following the Vietnam War, which ended in 1975. Some 1,335 are unaccounted for in Vietnam alone.

Source: Thanh Nien