Bosnian War

A combo picture shows different stories from the siege of Sarajevo in May, 1992, including General Ratko Mladić (top right), UN peacekeepers at the airport in Sarajevo and the Executive Council Building (Zgrada Izvršnog Vijeća) in the centre of the city after it was hit by a Serb tank shell.

The Bosnian War was a conflict that occurred in Bosnia and Herzigovina from April 1992 to December 1995. It was the third of the Yugoslav Wars.

The main belligerents were the forces of the Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina and those of the self-proclaimed Bosnian Serb and Bosnian Croat entities within Bosnia and Herzegovina, Republika Srpska (lead by Radovan Karadžić during the entirety of the war) and Herzeg-Bosnia, which were led and supplied by Serbia and Croatia, respectively.

The Bosnian Genocide, a campaign of genocide and ethnic cleansing carried out against Bosniaks (Bosnian Muslims) and Bosnian Croats by pro-Serbian forces, occurred during the Bosnian War.

Numerous war crimes and crimes against humanity were committed during the Bosnian War. A number of individuals were indicted and convicted by the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY), including Karadžić and Ratko Mladić. By early 2008, the ICTY had convicted 45 Serbs, 12 Croats and 4 Bosniaks of war crimes in connection with the war in Bosnia.

The most recent estimates suggest that around 100,000 people were killed during the war. Over 2.2 million people were displaced, making it the most devastating conflict in Europe since the end of World War II. In addition, an estimated 12,000–20,000 women were raped, most of them Bosniak.