[3][1] The event is considered to be the catalyst for the Vietnamese decision to retaliate against Cambodia later that year, which would result in the overthrow of both the Khmer Rouge and its leader Pol Pot.

[7][8] Despite the conflict, the leaders of the reunified Vietnam and of Cambodia held several public diplomatic exchanges during 1976 to underscore their supposedly-strong ties; however, the Khmer Rouge began cross-border attacks.

[9][10] On 25 September 1977, during the Mid-Autumn Festival, the Khmer Rouge launched an attack along the Cambodia-Vietnam border, about 10 kilometers deep into the territory of Tay Ninh Province, killing 592 local residents.

[1] Many civilians attempted to hide in the pagodas of Tam Buu and Phi Lai in the town, where they thought they would be safe.

[12] By April 30, the Khmer Rouge had retreated from the town before the Vietnamese army showed up leaving land mines that killed or injured another 200.

I was dumbfounded when I saw my granddaughter holding her mother's breast and sucking and next to her dear daughter lying motionless in a pool of blood."

He crawled out of a pile of corpses under the cover of darkness and hid in a cave in the Bảy Núi, known as Elephant Mountain, when "those who were mutilated by Pol Pot did not stop screaming".

[10] Another survivor, Ha Thi Nga, was taken captive near the border with her parents, siblings, husband and six children and was brutally beaten.

Instead of retreating to safer areas for long term guerrilla warfare right from the start, overestimating their own strength, the majority of the Kampuchean Revolutionary Army (KRA) forces faced the PAVN head on, only to be easily defeated by the far more experienced Vietnamese military within 2 weeks.

The Khmer Rouge rapidly collapsed and was overthrown on 7 January 1979 as it fled across the Cambodia–Thailand border and went into hiding, thus ending the Cambodian genocide as a whole.