Introduction
During the early part of the war, the Croatian capital Zagreb was spared from devastation, as it was far from the frontlines. Serb General Milan Čeleketić announced to the press on 24 March 1995, more than a month prior to the attack, that should a Croatian offensive be launched, he expected to respond by targeting the "weak points," that is, "the parks of the Croatian cities" and added: "We know who the people in the parks are; civilians."
In May 1995, Croatia launched Operation Flash which recaptured the area of western Slavonia (UNPA sector West), that was under Serb control since 1991. In neighboring Bosnia, the leader of the Republika Srpska, Radovan Karadžić, threatened to send help to the Serbs in Croatia. Following the rapid collapse of the Serb defence in the area, Serb leader Milan Martić ordered Serb rocket artillery units in the self-proclaimed Republic of Serbian Krajina to fire missiles on the capital of Zagreb. Karlovac and Sisak were also subjected to retaliatory attacks.
The Yugoslav-produced Orkan 262 mm Multiple rocket launchers (MRL) fires M-87 non-guided missiles. The ones fired against Zagreb were armed with aviation cluster bomb warheads (called cassette bombs or Jinglebell), each of which contains 288 "bomblets" (smaller ammunition) which are ejected at a height of 1,000 meters above the target area. Upon impact, each bomblet explodes and releases 420 steel pellets, the lethal range of each of which is ten meters. This means that each rocket releases around 120,000 of these pellets, which have been characterized as designed specifically to kill or maim local infantry.
Read more about this topic: Zagreb Rocket Attacks
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