Diplomats commemorate fallen Algerian journalists in Vietnam

Algiers (VNA) - Ambassador Nguyen Thanh Vinh, along with staff from the Vietnamese Embassy in Algeria and certain agencies, laid a wreath at a memorial stele on “Journalistes du Vietnam 8/3/1974” Street in the Algerian capital - Algiers - on March 7 to commemorate Algerian journalists who died in a plane crash in Vietnam in 1974.

On March 8, 1974, 15 journalists and technicians of Algerian press agencies such as El Moudjahid and APS together with nine Vietnamese journalists and three aircrew were killed in a plane crash in Hanoi’s Soc Son district while accompanying then Algerian President Houari Boumediene during an official visit to Vietnam.

To commemorate the incident, both Algeria and Vietnam erected memorial steles.

The stele in Vietnam was unveiled at the accident site in Soc Son district during a State visit by then Algerian President Abdelaziz Bouteflika in October 2000. The Algerian Government, meanwhile, built a monument and named a street “Journalistes du Vietnam (Journalists from Vietnam) 8/3/1974” in Algiers in 2013.

A wreath-laying ceremony held annually by the Vietnamese Embassy demonstrates the Vietnamese people’s tradition of expressing gratitude towards the previous generations for their contributions to the traditional friendship between the two countries and two peoples.

It is also meant to help the embassy’s staff members, especially the younger ones, and Vietnamese people in Algeria understand more about bilateral relations as well as their responsibility to unceasingly enhance mutual understanding between the two peoples, which was also the task the Algerian journalists and technicians and Vietnamese journalists on the flight had been performing before the accident happened.

On March 6, Ambassador Vinh also attended a forum held by the Echaab daily to commemorate the victims of the plane crash 47 years ago./.