Vietnamese Prime Minister Nguyen Tan Dung has denounced the “barbarous crimes” of the United States during its military intervention in the Southeast Asian country in the 1960s and 70s.

“They committed countless barbarous crimes, caused immeasurable losses and pain to our people and country,” he said in Ho Chi Minh City on Thursday to celebrate the 40th anniversary of the triumph of the Communist North Vietnamese forces and the vanquishing of the old Western-backed Saigon regime in what is known in Vietnam as “the American War.”

“The Great 1975 Spring Victory is a magnificent page in the history of protecting the country,” the prime minister added.

“We have finished the gloriously historical mission to totally liberate the South and reunite the country, bringing our country to a new era of independence and unification,” he said.

Participants sing and wave flags during a parade marking the 40th anniversary of the fall of Saigon in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam, April 30, 2015. (© AFP)

On April 30, 1975, North Vietnamese tanks rolled into Saigon, then the capital of South Vietnam. They clattered through the gates of the presidential palace and hoisted the Communist flag.

The Vietnam War claimed the lives of millions of Vietnamese, both civilians and soldiers from the divided North and South, and left hundreds of thousands more wounded.

It is estimated that some 58,000 US servicemen also died in the war, which the American public views as a tragic waste of young lives and a symbol of the over-extension of power.

American infantrymen crowd into a mud-filled bomb crater and look up at tall jungle trees as North Vietnamese snipers fire at them during a battle in Phuoc Vinh, northeast of Saigon, June 15, 1967. (© AP)

Pundits maintain that Washington’s concerns about the spread of communism drove the US army into the military intervention in Vietnam from 1965 to 1973.

In 1971, current US Secretary of State John Kerry, who was a soldier then, testified before the Senate that American forces had personally raped, cut off the ears, cut off heads, taped wires from portable telephones to human genitals and turned up the power, cut off limbs, blown up bodies, randomly shot at civilians and committed other crimes during the Vietnam War.

During the conflict, the United States military reportedly sprayed 75,700,000 liters of dioxin Agent Orange as part of the aerial defoliation program known as Operation Ranch Hand to pare back the thick jungle used as cover by the Northern Vietnamese forces.

This file photo shows a child victim of Agent Orange at Peace Village ward of Tudu Hospital in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam.

The government of Vietnam says some four million of its citizens were exposed to the chemical substance, and as many as 3 million have suffered illnesses, including cleft palate, mental disabilities, hernias, and extra fingers and toes, because of it.

The United States and Vietnam normalized relations in 1995, and the level of bilateral trade between the two countries surpassed $36 billion last year.

MP/HJL/HMV