The Mỹ Lai Massacre ( ; ) was the Vietnam War mass murder Killing of unarmed South Vietnamese civilians by U.S. troops in Sơn Tịnh District , South Vietnam , on 16 March 1968 .

This war crime , which was later called Name_conferral `` the most shocking Body_movement episode of the Vietnam War '' , took place Process_start in two hamlets of Sơn Mỹ village in Quảng Ngãi Province .

These hamlets were marked Recording on the U.S. Army topographic maps as Mỹ Lai and Mỹ Khê .

These hamlets were marked Recording on the U.S. Army topographic maps as Mỹ Lai and Mỹ Khê .

Currently , the event is referred Adducing to as the `` My Lai Massacre '' in the United States and called Name_conferral the `` Sơn Mỹ Massacre '' in Vietnam .

Along with the No Gun Ri massacre in South Korea 18 years earlier , Mỹ Lai was one of the largest publicized massacres of civilians by U.S. forces in the 20th century .