U.S. returns to Vietnam with aid

U.S. returns to Vietnam with aid

HANOI (AFP): Twenty five years after the end of the Vietnam War, the U.S. air force returned to the former southern capital on Wednesday with a consignment of relief aid for the flood- stricken Mekong Delta.

A first C-130 transport aircraft touched down at Tan Son Nhat airport -- one of the hubs of the U.S. wartime military effort -- from Anderson Air Force base in Guam, said a spokesman for the U.S. consulate in Saigon, now renamed Ho Chi Minh City.

Another C-130 and a chartered commercial plane are due to fly into the airport on Friday, spokesman Scott Weinhold said.

A total of 48,048 families have already been evacuated from homes in the delta following the region's worst floods in nearly 40 years and another 68,545 households are in urgent need of being moved.