Srebrenica Massacre
Bosnian Serb forces killed some 8,000 Muslim men and boys at Srebrenica in July 1995, in a town the United Nations had declared a safe area. The enclave in eastern Bosnia had held tens of thousands of refugees since 1993, was demilitarised under an agreement that disarmed its defenders without protecting it, and was garrisoned by about 400 lightly armed Dutch peacekeepers whose supplies and fuel the Serbs had been throttling for months. Ratko Mladić's forces attacked on 6 July and entered the town on the 11th. Requests for close air support went up through a chain of command that lost them, refused them, and eventually delivered two bombs. The population fled to the Dutch compound at Potočari. Women, small children and the elderly were bussed out; men and boys from about twelve to seventy-seven were separated, taken to warehouses, schools and fields, and shot over the following five days. A column of some 10,000 to 15,000 men attempted to walk thirty miles through the woods to Tuzla, and was shelled, ambushed and hunted; roughly a third got through. The bodies were buried in mass graves and then dug up with earthmoving equipment weeks later and scattered among secondary graves to conceal them, which is why identification has taken decades and why remains are still being matched. The International Criminal Tribunal and the International Court of Justice both found it to be genocide. Mladić and Radovan Karadžić were convicted and are serving life sentences. The Dutch government resigned over it in 2002.
- Year: 1995 CE
- Category: Military
