More than 250 additional sets of human remains were unearthed during drainage system upgrades beneath an alley in downtown Hanoi, taking the total number recorded since last week past 400, a local official told Tuoi Tre (Youth) newspaper on Monday.

The remains were buried nearly one meter below the surface of Alley 167 on Tay Son Street in Quang Trung Ward, Dong Da District.

“This is not the final figure yet. The ward will direct workers to continue digging deeper into the alley to find more funerary jars,” said the official from the ward.

“If no more human remains are found, the drainage system renovation project will proceed."

Phung Hung Funeral Home has relocated 138 sets to Yen Ky Cemetery in Hanoi’s Ba Vi District for reburial, according to the Quang Trung Ward administration.

The rest will be transported to the cemetery from December 1 to 3.

An official confirmed to Tuoi Tre on Thursday last week that nearly 150 sets had been discovered during drainage system renovations in the alley.

This was not the first time human remains had been found in the area, said the official.

Human remains had previously been detected during infrastructure and housing construction projects there.

A representative from the Quang Trung Ward administration provided the clarifications on Friday last week, saying that those remains belonged to ordinary people who died and were buried up to 70 years ago.

The representative rejected a hypothesis spreading on social media that they came from soldiers of China’s Qing Dynasty (1644-1912), who died and were buried there after Vietnamese Emperor Quang Trung defeated the invading Qing troops in 1789.

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