The Drenica massacres ( sr, Масакри у Дреници, Masakri u Drenici, al, Masakra në Drenicë) were a series of killings of

Kosovo Albanian The Albanians of Kosovo ( sq, Shqiptarët e Kosovës, ), also commonly called Kosovo Albanians, Kosovar/Kosovan Albanians or Kosovars/Kosovans, constitute the largest ethnic group in Kosovo. Kosovo Albanians belong to the ethnic Albanian sub-gr ...

civilians committed by

Serbia Serbia (, ; Serbian: , , ), officially the Republic of Serbia (Serbian: , , ), is a landlocked country in Southeastern and Central Europe, situated at the crossroads of the Pannonian Basin and the Balkans. It shares land borders with Hungar ...

n special police forces in the

Drenica Drenica ( al, Drenicë, Drenica, ), also known as the Drenica Valley, is a hilly region in central Kosovo, covering roughly around of Kosovo's total area (6%). It consists of two municipalities, Drenas and Skenderaj, and several villages in Kli ...

region of central

Kosovo Kosovo ( sq, Kosova or ; sr-Cyrl, Косово ), officially the Republic of Kosovo ( sq, Republika e Kosovës, links=no; sr, Република Косово, Republika Kosovo, links=no), is a partially recognised state in Southeast Euro ...

. According to

Human Rights Watch Human Rights Watch (HRW) is an international non-governmental organization, headquartered in New York City, that conducts research and advocacy on human rights. The group pressures governments, policy makers, companies, and individual human r ...

, abuses in the Drenica region during the

Kosovo War The Kosovo War was an armed conflict in Kosovo that started 28 February 1998 and lasted until 11 June 1999. It was fought by the forces of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (i.e. Serbia and Montenegro), which controlled Kosovo before the wa ...

1998–1999 "were so widespread that a comprehensive description is beyond the scope of this report". Key atrocities took place in the period of February – March 1998 in the Ćirez (Qirez), Likošane, and Prekaz and during the

NATO bombing of Yugoslavia The North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) carried out an aerial bombing campaign against the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia during the Kosovo War. The air strikes lasted from 24 March 1999 to 10 June 1999. The bombings continued until an a ...

, from March to June 1999 in the villages of Izbica, Rezala , Poklek and Staro Čikatovo.

Background

is a hilly region in central Kosovo inhabited almost exclusively by ethnic Albanians. The inhabitants of the region have a long tradition of strong resistance to outside powers, dating back to Ottoman rule in the

Balkans The Balkans ( ), also known as the Balkan Peninsula, is a geographical area in southeastern Europe with various geographical and historical definitions. The region takes its name from the Balkan Mountains that stretch throughout the who ...

. The villages of the Drenica region are the birthplace of the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA), which began armed operations in Drenica in 1996. By 1997, Kosovo Albanians had begun to refer to Drenica as "liberated territory" because of the KLA's presence.

Massacres in 1998

In January 1998, Serbian special police began operations that raided villages in Drenica linked to the KLA. Between February 28 and March 5, police launched multiple military-style attacks on the villages of Ćirez, Likoshan and Prekaz, using armored vehicles and

helicopter A helicopter is a type of rotorcraft in which lift and thrust are supplied by horizontally spinning rotors. This allows the helicopter to take off and land vertically, to hover, and to fly forward, backward and laterally. These attributes ...

s. Although the KLA engaged in combat during these attacks, government forces fired at women, children, and other noncombatants. On February 28 and March 1, responding to KLA ambushes of the police, special forces attacked two adjacent villages, Ćirez and Likoshan. These forces included helicopters, armored vehicles, mortars and machine guns which were turned without warning on civilians in the two villages. In all there were 24 civilians killed in the Ćirez and Likošane massacres. Less than one week later, on 5 March special police attacked the nearby village of Prekaz - home of

Adem Jashari Adem Jashari (born Fazli Jashari; 28 November 1955 – 7 March 1998) was one of the founders of the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA), a Kosovo Albanian separatist militia which fought for the secession of Kosovo from the Federal Republic of Yu ...

, the leader of the KLA. Jashari was killed along with his entire family, including women and children. The attacks, and the fighting that ensued, left 83 villagers dead, including at least 24 women and children. In all 83 Kosovo Albanians were killed. Among the dead were elderly people and at least 24 women and children. Many of the victims were shot at close range which suggested summary executions; subsequent reports from eyewitnesses confirmed this. On 3 March 1998, some 50,000 people gathered for the burial of 24 Drenica massacre victims in the village of Likoshan. These massacres were partly responsible for the radicalisation of the Kosovo Albanian population and helped to solidify armed opposition to Belgrade's rule. Many ethnic Albanians who had been committed to the nonviolent politics of

Ibrahim Rugova Ibrahim Rugova (; 2 December 1944 – 21 January 2006) was a prominent Kosovo Albanian political leader, scholar, and writer, who served as the President of the partially recognised Republic of Kosova, serving from 1992 to 2000 and as President ...

decided to join the KLA, in part because they viewed armed

insurgency An insurgency is a violent, armed rebellion against authority waged by small, lightly armed bands who practice guerrilla warfare from primarily rural base areas. The key descriptive feature of insurgency is its asymmetric nature: small irr ...

as the only means of achieving independence. The massacres marked the beginning of the

. After 28 February 1998, the fighting become an armed conflict. Once armed conflict broke out, the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY) became involved. On March 10 the ICTY proclaimed that its "jurisdiction covers the recent violence in Kosovo".

Massacres in 1999

Between 19 March and 15 June 1999, government forces in Drenica engaged in a campaign of ethnic cleansing of the Albanians of Kosovo that involved summary and arbitrary executions, detentions, beatings, looting, and destruction of schools, hospitals, and other civilian objects."

Glogovac Drenas, also known as Gllogoc or Glogovac, is a town and municipality in central Kosovo. As of the 2011 census, there were 6,143 people residing in Drenas and 58,531 in the municipality. History The municipality of Drenas was established be ...

(Gllogovc), a municipality that was a stronghold of the KLA in Drenica, was hard hit by this campaign. In Stari Poklek, a village close to Glogovac, Yugoslav forces executed two men and the family of one of the men due to their KLA links. Out of 47 family members (including 23 children under fifteen years old) that the forces attempted to kill with a grenade thrown into a room, there were six survivors. In Vrbovac, it is believed that 150 people were executed. Albanians, KLA members, suspected KLA members and their families in other villages surrounding Glogovac were also subject to execution by Serb forces. In Glogovac, over five days in May, the majority of the population was expelled and sent toward the Macedonian border. In Čikatovo, more than 100 ethnic Albanians were executed and buried in a

mass grave A mass grave is a grave containing multiple human corpses, which may or may not be identified prior to burial. The United Nations has defined a criminal mass grave as a burial site containing three or more victims of execution, although an exact ...

according to war crimes investigators. On 15 June 1999, Yugoslav forces withdrew from Glogovac following an agreement signed by

NATO The North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO, ; french: Organisation du traité de l'Atlantique nord, ), also called the North Atlantic Alliance, is an intergovernmental military alliance between 30 member states – 28 European and two No ...

Mass graves

In May 2010, a mass grave containing 250 bodies from the massacres were found in the village of Rudnica in Serbia. The bodies were transferred from graves located in Drenica in May or early June 1999.

References

External links