The event was attended by Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc, Chairwoman of the National Assembly Nguyen Thi Kim Ngan, President of the Vietnam Fatherland Front Central Committee Tran Thanh Man and many former leaders.
Secretary of the Ho Chi Minh City Party Committee Nguyen Thien Nhan said the meeting aimed to show gratitude for heroes, martyrs, soldiers and families who served the country’s revolutionary cause.
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Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc (right) meeting with delegates |
They shed their blood for national independence and reminded Vietnamese people of their heroic history, he said.
The Tet Offensive began in the early morning of January 31 in 1968 when liberation forces simultaneously launched attacks on American and Southern Vietnamese bases in cities such as Hue, Da Nang, Quy Nhon and Sai Gon, and hundreds of towns from Quang Tri to Ca Mau.
The offensive helped destroy huge amounts of facilities and logistics used by the US and the Southern regime’s militaries. The seven-month long campaign ended with tens of thousands of enemy troops dead, 600 strategic hamlets destroyed and 100 communes liberated with a population of 1.6 million people.
People in rural areas also took this opportunity to rise up against the US-backed government’s administration.
Saigon-Gia Dinh (now Ho Chi Minh City), the headquarters of the US-backed Southern regime, was a focus of the offensive.
The sudden attack won a great victory, politically, militarily and diplomatically, with important strategies: turning the war, destroying the “local war” strategy, forcing the US to change their military strategy and to stop bombing the North and eventually negotiate at the Paris Conference for the restoration of peace in Vietnam.
Source: VNA