The ć–siege of Bihać was a three-year-long siege of the northwestern Bosnian town of Bihać by the Army of the Republika Srpska, the Army of the Republic of Serbian Krajina and Bosniak dissenters led by the Bosniak politician Fikret Abdić during the 1992–95 Bosnian War. The siege lasted for three years, from June 1992 until 4–5 August 1995, when Operation Storm ended it after the Croatian Army (HV) overran the rebel Serbs in Croatia and northwest of the besieged town.
The Research and Documentation Center in Sarajevo established that the communities that were under siege – Bihać, Bosanska Krupa, Cazin and Velika Kladuša – had 4,856 killed or missing persons from 1991 to 1995.
Timeline
1992
After the secessionist Serb Republic of Serbian Krajina was proclaimed in 1991 on the west, the inhabitants of Bihać were prevented from crossing into that territory. Additionally, after Bosnian Serbs proclaimed the Republika Srpska in 1992 on the east, the communities of Bihać, Bosanska Krupa, Cazin and Velika Kladuša found themselves surrounded on both sides. The two Serbian armies cooperated in order to capture the Bosniak pocket in the middle of them. It was blockaded and bombarded by the Serbian forces starting on 12 June 1992. As a consequence, the residents of Bihać were forced to live in shelters, without electricity or a water supply, receiving only limited food-relief. Famine would occasionally break out. The Bihać county declared a state of emergency and formed its own resistance army, the V Corps.
Although he did not have any military education, Tomislav Dretar, an ethnic Croat, organized the defense of Croats in the Bihać area, became the president of the Croatian Democratic Union (HDZ) of Bihać, established the Croatian Defense Council (HVO) of Bihać and the Bihać area on 28 July 1992 in the village of Šmrekovac in the municipality of Velika Kladuša and become the First President and Military Commander as an officer with the title of Colonel. The Croatian units numbered a total of 1,200 men organized as smaller units within the Fifth Bihać Corps as an autonomous Croatian military component. Under his command the Croatian HVO units were a component of the Army of Republic Bosnia and Herzegovina.
An artillery shell fired from Serb positions in the hill hit the town centre on 11 August 1992, next to a building converted into a shelter for Bosniak women and children. It killed five people, including three children, and wounded 24. Eight people needed amputations. The director of the town's hospital said that "all of the casualties were big operations". The inhabitants of Bihać, armed with little except old rifles, had no means of retaliating. Instead, as on every day since 12 June, when the Army of the Republika Srpska first began to bombard Bihać, people simply did their best to carry away the wounded and clear up the wreckage. A secretary said it "took hours to wash away the blood". Almost every day, the Serbs fired more shells, some in the morning, some in the afternoon, and some at night. On one day in August, shelling lasted from 6.40 pm until well after midnight.
The region had a mainly Bosniak population and, since the outbreak of armed conflict, had received some 35,000 displaced persons, most of them coming from Serb controlled areas around Banja Luka and Sanski Most in the summer of 1992. In return, most of the Serbs, some 12,000 before the war, left Bihać for Banja Luka at the same time.
1993
The designation of Srebrenica as a safe area was extended on 6 May 1993 to include five other Bosnian towns: Sarajevo, Tuzla, Žepa, Goražde and Bihać. The Bosnian President, Alija Izetbegović, dismissed the concept. He said the havens would become death traps, where refugees, thinking they were safe, would instead become easy targets for Bosnian Serb forces.