In Phnom Penh and other cities, the Khmer Rouge told residents that they would only be moved about "two or three kilometers" away from the city and would return in "two or three days". Some witnesses said they were told that the evacuation was because of the "threat of American bombing" and they were also told that they did not have to lock their houses since the Khmer Rouge would "take care of everything" until they returned. If people refused to evacuate, they would immediately be killed and their homes would be burned to the ground. The evacuees were sent on long marches to the countryside, which killed thousands of children, elderly people and sick people. These were not the first evacuations of civilian populations by the Khmer Rouge because similar evacuations of populations without possessions had been occurring on a smaller scale since the early 1970s.