The remains of Australian soldiers killed in the Vietnam War will be brought back to Australia in June.

Last May, former Prime Minister Tony Abbott offered repatriation to the families of 35 Australians in the Terendak Military Cemetery in Malaysia and to another serviceman interred in the Kranji War Cemetery in Singapore, the ABC reported.

More than 30 families accepted the offer.

“The homecoming of their family member will be a very moving and emotional time, and their right to privacy, grief and reflection has been central in the government’s planning,” the minister for Veterans’ Affairs Dan Tehan said in a statement.

Minister Tehan’s announcement comes as a relief to the relatives of the ex-serviceman, who were part of a campaign launched by The Vietnam Veterans Association of Australia (VVAA)to bring the soldiers home.

VVAA’s president Ken Foster told the ABC, the families and the veterans’ community had been asking for the bodies to be reinterred for some time.

“It was the family members who started putting pressure and raising all sorts of questions about, ‘Is there some way we can have these veterans brought home?.”

Australia sent more than 60,000 troops to the Vietnam War between 1962 and 1975, and 521 Australians were killed.

But instead of bringing all the war dead home, 24 Australian casualties were flown to Terendak Military Cemetary, north of Malacca, and buried there, rather than returned home.

One soldier was buried in Singapore.

– with AAP