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A free-fire zone is an area in which any person present is deemed an enemy combatant who can be targeted by opposing military forces. The concept of a free-fire zone does not exist in international law, and failing to distinguish between combatants and civilians is a war crime. [1]
Lewy estimated the use of free-fire zones was an important factor in this. [ 4 ] [ 5 ] For official U.S. military operations reports on free-fire zones, there are no distinctions between enemy KIA and civilian KIA since it was assumed by U.S. forces that all individuals killed in an area declared a free-fire zone, regardless of whether they ...
The film gives an "unnerving and compelling .. subjective-camera-eye-view" of life under helicopter fire in a free-fire zone in the Mekong Delta during the Vietnam War. The film cuts to an "helicopter-eye view", contrasting painfully with the human tenderness seen earlier. [4] [5]
Nick Turse in his book Kill Anything That Moves asserts that "free fire zones", where any human present could be killed, helped the 9th Division achieve an unlikely enemy-to-GI kill ratio of 134:1 in April 1969. [21] It has also been asserted that the operation targeted "people running, people in black pajamas, civilians past night-time".
The other two companies from TF Barker were ordered to secure the area and provide support if needed. The area was designated a free fire zone, where American forces were allowed to deploy artillery and air strikes in populated areas, without consideration of risk to civilian or non-combatant lives. [20]
Such methods yielded both practical benefits and cynical propaganda opportunities. Some American tactics however caused collateral damage and extensive destruction to the countryside, including harassment and interdiction fires (H&I), deployment of heavy artillery and bombs in populated areas, defoliation and the creation of "free-fire" zones ...
Operation Hickory concluded on 28 May, the Marines had suffered 142 killed and 896 wounded and claimed that 362 PAVN were killed. Lam Son 54, Hickory, Belt Tight and Beau Charger also resulted in the removal of the entire civilian population from the area with the result that it was all now a free fire zone. [1]: 30
About one-third of the 875,000 people of Bình Định were displaced in 1966 by the war. In some instances the displacement of people by the U.S. and South Vietnam was deliberate, forcing people to leave the Kim Son and An Lao valleys and declaring them free fire zones. [9]: 58–9