A vote was taken in the National Assembly on 18 March in which Sihanouk was stripped of his power. General Lon Nol assumed the powers of the Head of State on an emergency basis. On 28 and 29 March there were large-scale popular demonstrations in favour of Sihanouk in several provincial cities, but Lon Nol's forces suppressed them, causing several hundred deaths. The Khmer Republic was formally declared that October, and Sihanouk – who had formed a government-in-exile, the GRUNK, incorporating the Khmer Rouge communists – was condemned to death "in absentia". In the meantime during the Cambodian Campaign of April 1970, US and South Vietnamese forces entered Cambodian territory in pursuit of North Vietnamese and Viet Cong troops.