Hanoi (VNA), March 13 -- Exactly 70 years ago, on March 13, 1954, the Vietnamese revolutionary army launched the first attack against the French colonialists' heavily fortified base of Dien Bien Phu, starting a 56-day historic campaign whose victory directly led to the signing of the Geneva Accords on ending the war and restoring peace in Indochina.

In the autumn - winter of 1953, French colonialists and US interventionists built the Navarre Plan that focused on turning Dien Bien Phu into the strongest military base in Indochina so as to seize control over the entire Northwest of Vietnam and the Upper Laos and destroy the majority of Vietnam's regular troops, paving the way for controlling the Vietnamese territory and pacifying South Ind...