Ethnic cleansing returns to Europe

Many villages in the regions bordering with Serbia (eastern Slavonia) were occupied and devastated, while their inhabitants, for the most part Croats or members of minorities other than Serbs (Hungarians, Ruthenians), were massacred or exiled with the intention of establishing "ethnically pure" areas. This marked the return of ethnic cleansing to Europe for the first time since 1945. The Yugoslav Army's air force, now entirely under the orders of the national Communist regime of Milošević and in the service of his expansionist policies, bombed the outskirts of the town of Vukovar, and besieged the town with 30,000 troops and more than 1000 armoured combat vehicles.

1991

7 October

Photo: LZMK / Hrvoje Knez

Bombing of the Presidential Palace in Zagreb

Upon expiry of a three-month moratorium on Croatian and Slovenian declarations of independence imposed by the international community, the fighter planes of the Serbo-Yugoslav army bombed the Presidential Palace in Zagreb. Croatian President Franjo Tuđman, Yugoslav Prime Minister Ante Marković and President of the Yugoslav Collective Presidency Stipe Mesić, all three Croats and gathered in the palace at the time of the bombing, miraculously escaped. The following day, Croatia confirmed its independence and permanently severed all ties to the moribund Yugoslav Federation, the institutions of which, now in the hands of Milošević, could no longer be described as federal.