April 17, 1975

Fall of Phnom Penh

Khmer Rouge capture Phnom Penh and begin its forced evacuation

Some residents came out to welcome the victors in the morning. By afternoon, soldiers were driving an estimated two million people out of the city at gunpoint.

The morning of 17 April 1975

Khmer Rouge forces entered Phnom Penh on the morning of 17 April 1975 and defeated the collapsing Khmer Republic, effectively ending the Cambodian Civil War. General Mey Sichan broadcast that Khmer Republic soldiers had surrendered.

Testimony before the Khmer Rouge tribunal indicates fighting generally ceased as government soldiers gave up. Khmer Rouge troops occupied major points in the capital and disarmed the defeated army. Many residents initially welcomed the black-clad troops, believing five years of war were over.

Emptied within hours

Soldiers began forcing the city’s inhabitants into the countryside the same day. Houses and schools were emptied at gunpoint and hospital patients were driven into the streets; the estimate for the population ordered out is about two million, a figure that includes large numbers of wartime refugees sheltering in the capital.

Residents were told the removal would be temporary. Tribunal evidence established that clearing the urban population was a centrally directed revolutionary policy.

Foreign nationals and Cambodian refugees gathered inside the French Embassy as the expulsion proceeded outside its gates — not only expatriates, though many of the Cambodians there were later forced out.

The American evacuation was five days earlier

The listing folds a “mass evacuation of American troops” into this date. That was Operation Eagle Pull on 12 April; the FRUS accounting puts its final lift at 276 U.S., Cambodian and third-country nationals.

Nor did the republic relocate. The remaining government surrendered and disintegrated; Sak Sutsakhan, who chaired the seven-member Supreme Committee formed on 12 April, escaped by helicopter.

Sources

Researched 24 Aug 2026 8 sources not yet audited

How this was checked

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What the sources leave uncertain

The broad sequence—entry, surrender, disarmament and forced evacuation—is firmly established, but precise hour-by-hour accounts and claims about particular execution locations vary.
The two-million population figure is an estimate that includes large numbers of wartime refugees in the capital.
Official U.S. histories publish slightly different Operation Eagle Pull totals depending on which evacuee categories and transport legs they count; the FRUS accounting used here gives 276.