This group put pressure on the President of Honduras, General Oswaldo López Arellano, to protect the property of wealthy landowners from campesinos, many of which were Salvadoran.

[9] Fully enforced by 1967, this law gave the central government and municipalities much of the land occupied illegally by Salvadoran immigrants and redistributed it to native-born Hondurans.

[7] It further claimed that "the Government of Honduras has not taken any effective measures to punish these crimes which constitute genocide, nor has it given assurances of indemnification or reparations for the damages caused to Salvadorans".

[19] The same day, a Piper PA-28 Cherokee, used by the Salvadoran Air Force (Spanish: Fuerza Aérea Salvadoreña, FAS) as a reconnaissance plane, was intercepted, but managed to escape capture.

[18] At the request of the Honduran foreign minister, the OAS held an emergency meeting the following day, where it was decided that the organization would "postpone any action of its own" and have the neighboring nations of Nicaragua, Costa Rica, and Guatemala mediate the situation.

[22] On 12 July, Honduras claimed that four Salvadoran soldiers had been killed in an incursion, something which El Salvador dismissed as part of a "continuing campaign of distortion of the truth".

[24][25] The war began on 14 July 1969 at around 6 PM,[15] when the FAS attacked Honduran airfields using P-51 Mustangs,[14][26] as well as C-47 Skytrains and civilian aircraft hastily converted into bombers.

[18] The Salvadoran Army then launched a two-front invasion of Honduras; one contingent headed to secure the prosperous Sula Valley, while the other marched along the Pan-American Highway toward Tegucigalpa.

[18] On 16 July, in the only major battle of the war, Salvadoran troops led by Colonel Mario (“El Diablo”) Velázquez Jandres, reached and surrounded Nueva Ocotepeque, pressing defenses in what TIME described as a "narrow defile".

[26][34][35] Soon after the start of the war, the OAS held a special session, organizing a seven nation committee to oversee negotiations and calling for a cease-fire.

[15] While Honduran officials were reportedly willing, El Salvador resisted OAS pressure for several days, with one of the biggest sticking points, according to the CIA, being the time window given for troops to be withdrawn.

[38][39] Honduras only fulfilled the first demand, but El Salvador relented after the OAS threatened sanctions, resulting in troops withdrawing on 2 August 1969.

[7][29]: 22  Honduras would go on to leave and thereby further weaken the already ailing Central American Common Market, a regional integration project that had been set up by the United States largely as a means of counteracting the effects of the Cuban Revolution.

[29]: 38 [6][41] Although it had initiated the war, El Salvador played in the World Cup; it was eliminated after losing its first three matches against the USSR, Mexico, and Belgium.

[42] Eleven years after the conflict the two nations signed a peace treaty in Lima, Peru on 30 October 1980[43] and agreed to resolve the border dispute over the Gulf of Fonseca and five sections of land boundary through the International Court of Justice (ICJ).

The commission did not meet after December, and in March 2013 stiff letters threatening military action were exchanged between Honduras and El Salvador.