Viet Gen. Le Trong Tan, 72, Dies

BANGKOK, Thailand — Vietnam announced the death of its army chief of staff only a week before its aging Communist leadership opens a national congress to review policy into the 1990s.

Gen. Le Trong Tan, a commander of military campaigns that took Saigon in 1975 and swept the Khmer Rouge from power in Cambodia in 1979, died Friday, the Vietnam News Agency said Sunday. He was 72.

Tan, who died in Hanoi after a heart attack, was appointed in 1978 to head the People’s Army of Vietnam. He led Vietnamese soldiers who took Hue and Danang in the former Republic of South Vietnam in 1975 and was a deputy commander of the campaign that seized Saigon and ended the war in April, 1975.