The massacres of Albanians in World War I were a series of war crimes committed by Serbian, Montenegrin, Greek and Bulgarian troops against the Albanian civil population of Albania, Macedonia and Kosovo during and immediately before the Great War. These atrocities were a continuation of the previous massacres committed during the Balkan Wars. In 1915, Serbian troops enacted a scorched-earth policy in Kosovo, massacring tens of thousands of Albanians. Between 1912 and 1915, 132 Albanian villages were razed to the ground.
Many Albanians in the region of Kičevo were killed by Bulgarian forces between 1915-1918. In 1916, many Albanians in Štrpce and Načallnik starved to death or became sick as a result of the Bulgarian soldiers collecting the villagers wheat which led to a man-made famine. The number of Albanians (including combatants) that were killed or died during WWI in Albania is estimated by Spencer Tucker to be around 70,000, approximately 8.75% of the country's population. The Committee of Kosovo, in 1919, asserted that the Serbian and Montenegrin armies killed 200,000 Albanians since the Balkan Wars, including some 100,000 Albanians killed in Kosovo from 1913 to 1915, and that Bulgarian troops had killed 50,000 Albanians throughout the War. In 1921, Albanian deputies claimed that 85,676 Kosovo Albanians were killed since the Balkan Wars.
After the Great War, Albanians in the Kingdom of Yugoslavia were subject to persecution.
Background
During the Balkan Wars, numerous atrocities were committed against the Albanian population in the territories occupied by the Balkan League, typically by Serbian and Montenegrin forces. According to contemporary accounts, around 25,000 Albanians were killed during the first half of the First Balkan War, before violence climaxed. It is estimated that up to 120,000 or more were killed in either Old Serbia or in all areas occupied by the Serbian Army. Additionally, according to Serbian documents, 281,747 Albanians above the age of six were expelled from Old Serbia by late 1914. This figure, however, is disputed and scholars estimate that between 60,000 and 240,000 Albanians were expelled from 1912–1913. The Carnegie Commission characterized the expulsions and massacres as an attempt to transform the ethnic structure of the regions inhabited mostly by Albanians.
Kosovo
Bytyci
In 1913, Serbian forces entered the region of Bytyci and killed 51 men and burned down 2,000 houses. Later, in 1915, the village was attacked again and the entire Ushki family was nearly eradicated, with only one survivor.
Astrazubi
In 1914, Serbian troops entered the village of Astrazubi in Malisheva and burned down 1,029 houses and killed 227 civilians, mostly women and children, although the number is believed to be higher according to Albanian sources. In the village of Banjë, the wounded were buried alive.
Gjilan
In 1914 Serbian troops committed many atrocities in Gjilan.
Kamënica
During the Serbian armys retreat, the soldiers set fire to Kamenica, Selac, Gradec and Vranisht, after having slaughtered a number of peasants and carried off the women. On November 1, 1915, the soldiers placed two pieces of light artillery two hundred paces from the village of Vecali, on the Tetovo-Prizren road, and set fire to the village with these pieces of artillery, killing nearly 65 men, women and children. The rest of the peasants managed to flee. Before the bombardment of the village, the peasants had given bread to the Serbian soldiers.
Pejë
In the region of Pejë in 1914, Serbian troops would execute roughly 25 Albanian civilians daily.
Vitia
In the village of Lubishtë, Serbian troops massacred 104 men, as well as 24 men in Julekar. In Lubishtë, the head of the Bakiya family, the old grandmother in the Metushi family and two children of the Emin family were burned alive.
Vardar Macedonia
Tetovo
In 1915, a young Albanian boy shot a Serbian soldier in the village of Dërbëcë in Tetovo. The Serbian army demanded that the village hand him over. The villagers refused which resulted in the entire village being massacred.
Bitola
According to Justin McCarthy, in 1915 Serbian and Bulgarian forces entered the region of Bitola, in Kičevo and Kruševo in Bitola, and burned between 19-36 villages. 503 men, 27 women and 25 children were killed, and 600 houses burned down.
Principality of Albania
According to an article in the Boston Daily Globe, published on November 8, 1915, the Serbo-Montenegrin troops shot or bayonetted 20,000 Albanian women and children and destroyed 300 villages and 35,000 houses, leaving 330,000 people without asylum.