Vietnam bids final farewell to president before burial

TIL Desk/World/Vietnam/ Vietnam held an emotional memorial for president Tran Dai Quang in Hanoi Thursday before his body was carried through the city with weeping residents and police lining the streets to bid him a final farewell. Quang died on Friday at age 61 after a long illness that officials described only as a “rare virus”.

A long-serving communist stalwart and former national police chief, Quang was celebrated for his dedication to the country that he spent much of his career serving. “The leader with many contributions to the country bid farewell to us… a great loss for the family and the nation,” Communist Party chief Nguyen Phu Trong said at a ceremony Thursday.

Quang’s family, dressed in black with white headbands, stood near his coffin draped in the national flag and beneath a portrait of the leader and a framed collection of his medals. “My father’s wish was to spend his whole life contributing to the nation and revolutionary cause,” Quang’s son Tran Quan told the funeral home packed with uniformed police and officials wearing black armbands.