In 1994, Cambodia was still struggling to move past the explosion of violence it suffered in the late 1970s and its aftermath. The country had emerged from French colonial rule in 1953, and its leaders sought to maintain neutrality in South-East Asian affairs. This was complicated by the expanding civil war in Viet Nam, the effects of which spilled over the border with Cambodia with growing frequency. A communist insurgency led to a civil war in Cambodia in 1967, which the rebels known as the Khmer Rouge won when they defeated government forces in April 1975. The following four years under the Khmer Rouge were marked by a brutal genocide in which up to two million people – roughly a quarter of the country’s population – were killed. After the Khmer Rouge government was toppled in January 1979 by Vietnamese forces, the communist group managed to maintain control over parts of the country’s north and north-west. Khmer Rouge fighters and the Cambodian Royal Armed Forces engaged in sporadic fighting throughout the 1980s, regularly exposing thousands of civilians to hostilities. In February and April 1994, the Cambodian army carried out major offensives on Khmer Rouge strongholds in Anlong Veng (in the north) and Pailin City (in the north-west), although the rebel fighters soon retook both towns. Further clashes took place in May and August in Battambang and Banteay Meanchey provinces, again taking a heavy toll on civilians and causing thousands of people to flee their homes. The government was also the target of a failed military coup in early July. While the international community was losing interest in Cambodia's internal violence, the ICRC kept working in the country – our task facilitated in part by our ongoing dialogue with the Khmer Rouge’s Democratic Kampuchea party. ICRC teams worked out of our main delegation in Phnom Penh, where Sambath was based, along with two subdelegations and an office in the north-west. Our delegates continued to visit groups of captured Khmer Rouge combatants held in places of detention run by the Ministry of the Interior in the capital and the provinces. Staff members responsible for tracing missing people in Cambodia resolved an impressive one-third of cases in 1994; the tracing team also worked with Cambodian Red Cross staff members to exchange Red Cross messages between detainees and their families, some of whom were living outside the country. We provided medical supplies to Mongkol Borei hospital in Banteay Meanchey province and delivered extensive on-the-job training to local surgical teams. By July, the last ICRC surgeon was able to leave that hospital, although two ICRC nurses remained on site. We completed water and sanitation projects begun the previous year in five places of detention in the capital and 13 in the provinces; our teams also repaired the water supply system at the military hospital in Battambang. Owing in part to the proliferation of land mines in the country, our orthopaedic centre in Battambang was kept busy making prostheses and fitting them to amputees. We opened a new orthopaedic workshop in the capital in June.