Warning: this slideshow contains images which you may find disturbingThe Vietnam War ended 35 years ago, on April 30, 1975, with the fall of Saigon, now known as Ho Chi Minh City, to communist troops from the north. In this gallery, we look back at the conflict
April 30, 1975: a North Vietnamese tank rolls through the gate of the Presidential Palace in Saigon, signifying the fall of South Vietnam
June 11, 1963: Quang Duc, a Buddhist monk, burns himself to death on a Saigon street to protest alleged persecution of Buddhists by the South Vietnamese government
January 9, 1964: a South Vietnamese soldier uses the end of a dagger to beat a farmer for allegedly supplying government troops with inaccurate information about the movement of Viet Cong guerrillas in a village west of Saigon
March 19, 1964: a father holds the body of his child as South Vietnamese Army Rangers look down from their armoured vehicle near the Cambodian border
March 1965: hovering US Army helicopters pour machine gun fire into a tree line to cover the advance of South Vietnamese ground troops in an attack on a Viet Cong camp 18 miles north of Tay Ninh, northwest of Saigon near the Cambodian border
June 18, 1965: an unidentified US Army soldier wears a hand lettered "War Is Hell" slogan on his helmet
September 25, 1965: paratroopers of the US 2nd Battalion, 173rd Airborne Brigade hold their automatic weapons above water as they cross a river in the rain during a search for Viet Cong positions in the jungle area of Ben Cat, South Vietnam
November 3, 1965: a blindfolded Viet Cong guerrilla who refused to walk when captured after a raid on a Communist jungle hospital is carried on the back of a US soldier to an evacuation helicopter
November 15, 1965: a US Army officer sets fire to a hut in a Viet Cong training camp captured by the First Infantry Division during an attack on a stronghold 50 miles north west of Saigon
January 1, 1966: women and children crouch in a muddy canal as they take cover from intense Viet Cong fire at Bao Trai, about 20 miles west of Saigon
January 1966: First Cavalry Division medic Thomas Cole, from Richmond, Virginia, looks up with one uncovered eye as he treats a wounded Staff Sgt Harrison Pell during a firefight in the Central Highlands in Vietnam, between US troops and a combined North Vietnamese and Vietcong force
June 17, 1966: US Air Force planes spray the defoliant chemical Agent Orange over dense vegetation in South Vietnam
September 12, 1966: bewilderment and fear shows in the eyes of the youngest in a family of Vietnamese awaiting interrogation in a Viet Cong village 45 miles from Saigon. The blindfolds were intended to prevent the older members from observing American troop positions
September 21, 1966: US Marines emerge from their muddy foxholes at sunrise after a third night of fighting against continued attacks of north Vietnamese 324 B division troops
1966: Pfc Lacey Skinner of Birmingham, Alabama, crawls through the mud of a rice paddy avoiding heavy Viet Cong fire near An Thi in South Vietnam, as troops of the US 1st Cavalry Division fight a fierce 24-hour battle along the central coast
1966: the body of an American paratrooper killed in action in the jungle near the Cambodian border is raised up to an evacuation helicopter in War Zone C
1966: US Army helicopters providing support for ground troops fly into a staging area 50 miles northeast of Saigon
June 1967: medic James E Callahan of Pittsfield, Massachusetts, looks up while applying mouth-to-mouth resuscitation to a seriously wounded soldier north of Saigon
June 15, 1967: American infantrymen crowd into a mud-filled bomb crater and look up at tall jungle trees seeking out Viet Cong snipers firing at them during a battle in Phuoc Vinh, north-northeast of Saigon in War Zone D
June 17, 1967: medic James E Callahan of Pittsfield, Massachusetts, treats a US infantryman who suffered a head wound when a Viet Cong bullet pierced his helmet during a three-hour battle in war zone D, about 50 miles northeast of Saigon
September 20, 1967: a Viet Cong suspect is led like a dog by a US marine for interrogation near Da Nang, South Vietnam
October 5, 1967: a young North Vietnamese woman covers a US Air Force pilot with a rifle as he is marched, head bowed, from his aircraft after being shot down near Hanoi
February 1, 1968: South Vietnamese General Nguyen Ngoc Loan, chief of the national police, fires his pistol into the head of suspected Viet Cong officer Nguyen Van Lem, also known as Bay Lop, on a Saigon street, early in the Tet Offensive
April 1969: a South Vietnamese woman mourns over the body of her husband, found with 47 others in a mass grave near Hue
June 8, 1972: nine-year-old Kim Phuc, centre, runs down Route 1 near Trang Bang, Vietnam after an aerial napalm attack
March 17, 1973: released prisoner of war Lt Col Robert L Stirm is greeted by his family at Travis Air Force Base in Fairfield, California, as he returns home from the Vietnam War
April 29, 1975: people try to scale the 14-foot wall of the US Embassy in Saigon, trying to reach evacuation helicopters, as the last of the Americans depart from Vietnam
April 29, 1975: a South Vietnamese mother and her three children are shown on the deck of an amphibious command ship being plucked out of Saigon by US Marine helicopters
April 29, 1975: US Navy personnel aboard the USS Blue Ridge push a helicopter into the sea off the coast of Vietnam in order to make room for more evacuation flights from Saigon
April 30, 1975: North Vietnamese tanks roll across the Presidential Palace grounds of the then South Vietnam in Saigon. At 11:30 a.m. local time the Vietcong flag was raised above it, signalling the end of the war. Nearly one-and-a-half million people had been killed, and a further three million wounded
April 30, 1975: Saigon residents take to the street to welcome the arrival of communist troops on trucks after the fall of Saigon which marked the end of the Vietnam War
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