<P> Outside Huế, elements of the U.S. 1st Air Cavalry Division and the 101st Airborne Division fought to seal PAVN access and cut off their lines of supply and reinforcement . By this point in the battle 16 to 18 PAVN battalions (8,000 - 11,000 men) were taking part in the fighting for the city itself or the approaches to the former imperial capital . Two of the North Vietnamese regiments had made a forced march from the vicinity of Khe Sanh to Huế in order to participate . During most of February, the allies gradually fought their way towards the Citadel, which was only taken after twenty - five days of intense struggle . The city was not declared recaptured by U.S. and ARVN forces until 25 February, when members of the 2nd Battalion, 3rd Regiment, 1st ARVN Division raised the South Vietnamese flag over the Palace of Perfect Peace . </P> <P> During the intense action, the allies estimated that North Vietnamese forces had between 1,042 and 5,000 killed and 89 captured in the city and in the surrounding area . 216 U.S. Marines and soldiers had been killed during the fighting and 1,609 were wounded . 421 ARVN troops were killed, another 2,123 were wounded, and 31 were missing . More than 5,800 civilians had lost their lives during the battle and 116,000 were left homeless out of an original population of 140,000. 40 - 50% of Huế was destroyed by the end of the battle . </P> <P> In the aftermath of the recapture of the city, the discovery of several mass graves (the last of which were uncovered in 1970) of South Vietnamese citizens of Huế sparked a controversy that has not diminished with time . The victims had either been clubbed or shot to death or simply buried alive . The official allied explanation was that during their initial occupation of the city, the PAVN had quickly begun to systematically round up (under the guise of re-education) and then execute as many as 2,800 South Vietnamese civilians that they believed to be potentially hostile to communist control . Those taken into custody included South Vietnamese military personnel, present and former government officials, local civil servants, teachers, policemen, and religious figures . Historian Gunther Lewy claimed that a captured Viet Cong document stated that the communists had "eliminated 1,892 administrative personnel, 38 policemen, 790 tyrants ." The North Vietnamese officer, Bùi Tín, later further muddied the waters by stating that their forces had indeed rounded up "reactionary" captives for transport to the North, but that local commanders, under battlefield exigencies, had executed them for expediency's sake . </P> <P> General Ngô Quang Trưởng, commander of the 1st ARVN Division, believed that the captives had been executed by the communists in order to protect the identities of members of the local Viet Cong infrastructure, whose covers had been blown . The exact circumstances leading to the deaths of those citizens of Huế discovered in the mass graves may never be known exactly, but most of the victims were killed as a result of PAVN and NLF executions, considering evidence from captured documents and witness testimonies among other things . </P>

After the tet offensive what military positions were the north vietnamese and south vietnamese in