LESSER-KNOWN BUT HORRIFIC WAR CRIMES THAT MIGHT SHOCK YOU

BLEIBURG REPATRIATIONS

The Bleiburg repatriations encompass events that took place

after World War II in Europe, when tens of thousands of

soldiers and civilians associated with the Axis Powers fleeing

Yugoslavia were repatriated to that country. Thousands

were murdered or subjected to forced labour camps.

VISEGRAD MASSACRES

The Visegrad massacres, also known as the Visegrad

Genocide, were acts of mass murder committed against the

Bosniak population of the town of Visegrad during the ethnic

cleansing of eastern Bosnia at the start of the Bosnian War.

According to documents from the International Criminal

Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY), based on the

victim reports, about three thousand Bosniaks were murdered

during the violence, including about six hundred women

and 119 children.

GHOUTA CHEMICAL ATTACK

The Ghouta chemical attack took place during the Syrian

Civil War in the early hours of August 21, 2013. Several

opposition-controlled areas around Damascus were struck

by rockets containing the chemical agent sarin. Estimates of

the death toll range from at least 281 to 1,729, with many

of them children. The attack was the deadliest use of

chemical weapons since the Iran–Iraq War.

KHAN YUNIS MASSACRE

This massacre took place during the Suez Crisis on November 3,

1956, in the Palestinian town of Khan Yunis. During an Israel

Defence Forces operation to reopen the Egyptian-blockaded

Straits of Tiran, Israeli soldiers shot two hundred unarmed

Palestinians in Khan Yunis and Rafah. According to Joe Sacco’s

graphic novel Footnotes in Gaza, Israeli soldiers shot a

number of Palestinian men in their homes and lined up others

and executed them. However, the Israeli authorities claim IDF

soldiers ran into local militants and a battle erupted.

AL-ASKARI MOSQUE BOMBING

On February 22, 2006, al-Askari mosque, the Iraqi city of

Samarra, was bombed. President George W. Bush suggested

that “the evidence indicated” it was “an Al Qaeda plot.”

The bombing was followed by retaliatory violence with over a

hundred dead bodies being found the next day and well

over one thousand people killed in the days

following the bombing.

NISOUR SQUARE MASSACRE

On September 16, 2007, Blackwater military contractors

(a private military corporation) shot and killed seventeen

Iraqi civilians in Nisour Square in Baghdad. The fatalities

occurred while a Blackwater Personal Security Detail (PSD)

was escorting a convoy of US State Department vehicles

to a meeting in western Baghdad with officials from the

US Agency for International Development. The shooting led

to the unravelling of the North Carolina–based company,

which since has replaced its management and

changed its name to Xe Services.

KLECKA KILLINGS

The Klecka killings involved the mass murder of twenty-two

Kosovo Serb civilians, including children, by members of the

Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA). After the killings, members of the

KLA attempted to dispose of the bodies by incinerating them

in a lime kiln. The Yugoslav Ministry of Foreign Affairs

condemned the killings as a “Nazi-style crime.”

SREBRENICA MASSACRE

The Srebrenica massacre (1995) was the murder of more than

eight thousand Muslim Bosniaks, mainly men and boys, in and

around the town of Srebrenica during the Bosnian War. The

killings were perpetrated by units of the Bosnian Serb Army of

Republika Srpska (VRS) under the command of

General Ratko Mladic.

AL-ANFAL CAMPAIGN

The al-Anfal Campaign, also known as the Kurdish Genocide,

was a violent campaign against the Kurdish people in

northern Iraq, led by Ali Hassan al-Majid in the final stages

of the Iran–Iraq War. The campaign also targeted other

minority communities including Assyrians, Shabaks, Iraqi

Turkmens, Yazidis, Mandeans. Many villages belonging to

these ethnic groups were also destroyed.