Silence finally fell across Cambodia's battlefields last week after five years of fratricidal fighting that claimed as many as 1 million casualties, leveled once graceful Cambodian cities and scorched the tranquil countryside. Admitting the futility of further resistance, the remaining leaders of the Khmer Republic drove to a prearranged meeting place—Kilometer 6 on Route 5—and there surrendered to officers of the Communist-dominated Khmer Rouge insurgents. Not since Seoul was overrun by North Korean attackers nearly a quarter-century ago had a national capital fallen in combat to Communist troops.
White Flags. Although government leaders had been vowing "to fight until the last drop of blood," there was no attempt at a last-ditch stand. Instead, with the city's last defenses collapsing before the rebels' relentless pounding, the government military command ordered its troops to surrender their weapons to the insurgents. As announcements blared from loudspeakers mounted on army trucks, white flags and banners sprouted everywhere—from downtown buildings and shops, from the masts of government gunboats in the Mekong and Tonle Sap rivers, from armored personnel carriers of the government's 2nd Infantry Division.
Then the black-uniformed rebels started entering the capital, first from the north and then from the west and south. Initially, at least, there was none of the carnage that some government officials had predicted. Neither was there the stony silence that has greeted conquerors in other civil wars. The rebels were given a tumultuous welcome. Streets were crowded as the besieged city's inhabitants cheered and waved white flags or strips of white cloth. About the only shooting came from jubilant insurgents triumphantly firing into the air.
There were, to be sure, some ominous notes. When the Khmer Rouge seized the government radio station, a rebel spokesman said menacingly in a broadcast: "We did not come here to talk. The Lon Nol clique [a reference to the President, who fled about a month ago] and some of its officers should all be hanged." Fearing reprisals from the Communists, a number of government officials and military officers, plus an estimated 2,000 other Cambodians, took refuge in the Hotel Le Phnom, which the International Red Cross had declared a neutral zone.
At the Ministry of Information, meanwhile, the Khmer Rouge commander in Phnom-Penh broadcast an appeal to all "ministers and generals who have not run away" to meet with him to "help formulate measures to restore order." At week's end, although almost all communication with Phnom-Penh was closed, there were unconfirmed reports that the Khmer Rouge had beheaded some members of the former government. There was no word as to the fate of Premier Long Boret, who was said to have been arrested while attempting to escape by helicopter.