Operation Storm

Operation Storm (Croatian/Bosnian/Serbian: Operacija Oluja, Cyrillic: Oпeрaциja Oлуja) is the code name given to a large-scale military operation carried out by Croatian Armed Forces, in conjunction with the Army of the Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina retaking control of the Krajina region that had been under Serb control since 1991.

After the second Srebrenica massacre, there were concerns that there would be a repeat of the massacre in the Bihać pocket area, where the population of Bosniaks was four times larger than in Srebrenica and which was surrounded and under attack by Bosnian Serb and Croatian Serb forces, as well as by the forces of the Autonomous Province of Western Bosnia led by Fikret Abdić.

At dawn on 4 August 1995, the attack began with 150,000 Croatian Army troops amassed along 630 kilometres of front lines. Their forces soon broke through the lines of the Krajina Serb army and began a rapid advance toward the capital of Knin. By the second day of the operation, the Serb forces collapsed and the bulk of the RSK army retreated. The Croatian forces swiftly captured the entire region in four days, effectively ending the operation on 8 August. The operation, which lasted 84 hours, was documented as the largest European land offensive since World War II.

Following the offensive, a mass exodus of the Serb population ensued, and a variety of crimes were committed against the remaining civilians in the then-lawless areas of Krajina. Subsequently, three Croatian generals have been prosecuted by the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia for their involvement in this controversial aftermath, but were later acquitted, and the operation was recognized as within full legal parameters of international law.