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Phnom Penh, the capital of Cambodia, fell to followers of the Communist Party of Kampuchea, commonly known as the [[Khmer Rouge]], on April 17, 1975. Over the next four years, the Khmer Rouge enacted a genocidal policy that would kill over one-fourth of all Cambodians, or more than 2 million people. Investigators have uncovered and examined the remains of 1,386,734 Cambodians found in mass graves near Khmer Rouge execution centers whose cause of death has been determined to have been primarily execution by the former Khmer Rouge regime. <ref>http://www.mekong.net/cambodia/deaths.htm</ref> Because only about one-half to a third of those who died during the Khmer Rouge years were executed (the rest having died from other causes like state-created famine, the deliberate withholding of basic necessities by the state, the refusal by the state to allow foreign aid, the abolishing of medicine and hospitals by the state, systematic overwork and slave labor by the state, brutal mistreatment by the state, and normal mortality), the Documentation Center of Cambodia estimates that the former regime killed or otherwise caused the unnecessary deaths of, between 2.0 and 2.5 million Cambodians, with a most likely estimate of 2.2 million.<ref>http://www.mekong.net/cambodia/deaths.htm</ref> This is because 2.5 to 3 million Cambodians died from 75-79, and 500,000 deaths over this time would have represented normal mortality. A UN investigation reported 2-3 million dead, while UNICEF estimated 3 million had been killed.<ref>William Shawcross, The Quality of Mercy: Cambodia, Holocaust, and Modern Conscience (Touchstone, 1985), p115-6</ref> Even the Khmer Rouge acknowledged that 2 million had been killed—though they attributed those deaths to a subsequent Vietnamese invasion.<ref>Khieu Samphan, Interview, Time, March 10, 1980</ref> By late 1979, UN and Red Cross officials were warning that another 2.25 million Cambodians faced death by starvation due to “the near destruction of Cambodian society under the regime of ousted Prime Minister Pol Pot,”<ref>New York Times, August 8, 1979.</ref><ref>http://www.time.com/time/magazine/printout/0,8816,912511,00.html</ref> who were saved by American and international aid. After repeated border clashes in 1978, Vietnam invaded Cambodia and ousted the Khmer Rouge. Another 100-200,000 Cambodians were killed by the brutal dictatorship imposed on Cambodia by Communist Vietnam. Cambodia's civil war from 1978-1994 killed an estimated 200,000 individuals.<ref>http://users.erols.com/mwhite28/warstat3.htm#Cambodian</ref> As estimated by the CIA, the deliberate continuation of the great 1979 famine ''after'' the fall of the Khmer Rouge by the invading Vietnamese led to the deaths of an additional 700,0000 Cambodians from January 1979 until 1980.<ref>http://www.mekong.net/cambodia/demcat.htm</ref> The CIA estimated that the civil war reduced the expected 1979 population to slightly over 8 million, that the Khmer Rouge reduced the actual 1979 population to between 6 and 6.5 million, and that by 1980 the population had fallen to roughly 5 and a half million at the hands of the Vietnamese.<ref>http://www.mekong.net/cambodia/demcat.htm</ref> The CIA concluded that these tragic events "may ultimately spell the demise of the Khmer as a people."