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Bodies of 87 Elderly Victims Found in Southern Croatia
Autopsies showed that most of the victims had been shot in the head from close range, HINA said. The bodies were discovered at 21 sites in and around several villages between the Dalmatian coastal city of Zadar and Knin, the capital of Serb rebellion in the 1991 Serb-Croat war.
All were elderly Croat civilians who refused to leave their homes when their villages fell to local Serbs in 1991. The report did not specify when the people were killed. Some 10,000 people were killed and 2,800 disappeared during Croatia’s six-month war when Serbs seized a third of Croatia and launched a campaign of terror against Croats who stayed in Serb-held territory. Croatia’s army recaptured most of the land in two offensives last year.
The United Nations says 200 elderly Serbs who could or would not flee the first offensive in the Western Slavonia region were killed. Then, following the second offensive that drove Serbs from the Knin area, Croat gangs marauded through the region, killing Serbs who did not flee. U.N. monitors say they suspect 750 Serb corpses were buried in four suspected mass graves near Knin. They have accused Croatian authorities of preventing exhumation at those sites.
The bodies found in the Zadar and Knin areas were identified by medical experts and relatives before being reburied.
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Zagreb, Croatia, June 1 (AP) - Officials have dug up the corpses of 87 elderly Croats killed after they refused to flee when their villages in southern Croatia fell to Serb rebels, the state-run news agency HINA said Saturday. 
Yugoslav Crisis & The World, 1993
History of conflict in the Balkans
Knin, The Serbian Perspective
Croatian Offensive on Knin, Operation 'Oluja'
Croatian Serbs leave Knin, August, 1995
Zadar County Chamber
Zadar World Wide Web Pages
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