Daoud and most of his family were executed at the Arg presidential palace in the capital city of Kabul by Khalqist (a PDPA faction) military officers, after which his supporters were also purged and killed.

At a press conference in New York in June 1978, Amin claimed that the event was not a coup d'état, but rather a "popular revolution" carried out by the "will of the people" against Daoud's government.

[20] President Daoud was convinced that closer ties and military support from the Soviet Union would allow Afghanistan to take control of Pashtun lands in northwestern Pakistan.

The KGB, having been informed of the coup two days earlier by Mohammed Rafie and Sayed Mohammad Gulabzoy, accused the Iranian SAVAK of tricking PDPA supporters into starting a rebellion.

[20] On the early morning of the day of the coup, Daoud had just gotten ready when one of his office members informed him of a "riot" that was taking place in one of the military garrisons in Kabul.

[24] 50 armored vehicles belonging to the 4th Tank Brigade entered the city under the orders of then-Senior Captain Aslam Watanjar, and at the same time, Abdul Qadir took control of the MiG-21-equipped 322nd Air Regiment.

According to an eyewitness, the first signs of the impending coup in Kabul, at about noon on 27 April, were reports of a tank column headed toward the city, smoke of unknown origin near the Ministry of Defense, and armed men, some in military uniform, guarding Ariana Circle, a major intersection.

The first shots heard were near the Ministry of Interior in the downtown Shahr-e Naw section of Kabul, where a company of policemen apparently confronted an advancing tank column.

The use of the word Khalq, and its traditional association with the communists in Afghanistan, made clear that the PDPA was leading the coup, and also that the rebels had captured the radio station.

[20] Lastly, at 11:30pm, armored units were dispatched to Jalalabad to fight loyalist officers of the Afghan Army’s 11th Division who refused to accept the coup, with the death toll nearing 1000 people.

As the people of Kabul ventured out of their homes they realized that the rebels were in complete control of the city and learned that President Daoud and his brother Naim had been killed early that morning.

After a day of fighting, an army lieutenant of the 444th Commando Brigade named Imamuddin entered the palace with a unit of soldiers to arrest Daoud.

[42] Political scientist William Maley has noted that while the Soviets were not directly involved, rising tensions with Daoud may have prompted them to refrain from taking steps to prevent an Afghan communist coup.

"[44] One year before Lieutenant General Shahnawaz Tanai’s death, in 2021, he admitted that the coup was done without Soviet assistance in the documentary "Afghanistan: The Wounded Land".

[45] In 1997, during his residency in Tashkent, General Nabi Azimi additionally admitted the same thing and attempted to debunk claims of Soviet involvement in the coup, notably from Ahmad Shah Massoud’s brother and various Afghan writers.

[48] Before the civilian government was established, Afghan Air Force colonel Abdul Qadir and the PDPA Revolutionary Council led the country for three days from 27 April 1978.

Khalqist chief Taraki was a hardline Leninist who advocated the implementation of a campaign modelled after the Bolshevik "Red Terror" to impose Marxist policies in Afghanistan.

"[62][63]According to journalist and CNAS member Robert D. Kaplan, while Afghanistan had historically been extremely poor and underdeveloped, it was a "civilized" country that "had never known very much political repression" until 1978.

[58] Political scientist Barnett Rubin wrote, "Khalq used mass arrests, torture, and secret executions on a scale Afghanistan had not seen since the time of Abdul Rahman Khan, and probably not even then".

[64] The soldiers' knock on the door in the middle of the night, so common in many Arab and African countries, was little known in Afghanistan, where a central government simply lacked the power to enforce its will outside of Kabul.

But it was carried out in such a violent way that it alarmed even the Soviets.Kaplan stated that it was the Saur Revolution and its harsh land reform program, rather than the December 1979 Soviet invasion "as most people in the West suppose", that "ignited" the mujahidin revolt against the Kabul authorities and prompted the refugee exodus to Pakistan.

[68] In response to Soviet disagreements with the radicalism of the Khalq, Hafizullah Amin, general secretary of the PDPA, stated: "Comrade Stalin showed us how to build socialism in a backward country.

[68][69] Those killed in the campaign included landowners, religious clerics, Islamists, political dissidents, intellectuals, former bureaucrats of the Republic of Afghanistan, and any alleged critics of PDPA regime's ruthless policies.

All royal property were seized, members were deprived of Afghan citizenship, and the flow of money to the exiled King Mohammed Zahir Shah and his wife Humaira Begum in Italy were halted.

Prince Ali Abdul Seraj, a great-grandson of the 19th century emir Abdur Rahman Khan, was on the list and managed to flee Afghanistan with his wife and child while disguised as a hippie, joining a bus full of British and Australian hashish smokers.

With regime brutality only increasing, and several uprisings the following year (most notably that in Herat) leaving most provinces in the country under guerilla control,[73] Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan in December 1979, citing the Brezhnev Doctrine as basis of its military invasion.

Robert D. Kaplan described the Khalqist red terror campaign as "the first instance of organized nationwide repression in Afghanistan's modern history".

[74] In 1991, PDPA member Babrak Karmal, who headed the Parcham faction and served as president after the Soviet invasion, denounced the Saur Revolution: "It was the greatest crime against the people of Afghanistan.