Staro Gracko massacre

NATO launched an air campaign against the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia lasting from 24 March to 10 June 1999 when the Yugoslav authorities agreed to sign the Kumanovo Agreement. After 40,000 Yugoslav troops left Kosovo, NATO-led international peacekeepers established the Kosovo Force (KFOR) with 50,000 troops, while 170,000 Kosovo Serbs fled to Central Serbia. Although the village of Staro Gracko, with a population of 300, was predominantly inhabited by ethnic Serbs and was home to eighty Serb and two Kosovo Albanian families, the surrounding villages were inhabited by ethnic Albanians. ==Massacre==

On 23 July 1999, at approximately 9:13 pm, British KFOR troops heard gunfire and contacted a NATO reaction-force which hurried to the scene. The NATO soldiers subsequently discovered the bodies of thirteen Serbs next to a combine harvester by an open field. A fourteenth body was discovered lying on a tractor nearby. The farmers had been returning home after a day of harvesting wheat. The British patrol had visited the site just five hours before the bodies were discovered and found nothing strange. ==Aftermath==

After the fourteen bodies were discovered, Canadian troops cordoned off the village. The bodies were then taken to a hospital in Pristina to be identified. Four people were arrested two days later in relation to the killings, but were released. UNMIK police arrested an ethnic Albanian man in 2007 but released him two months later for lack of evidence. In 2010, UN prosecutors handed over the case file to EULEX, who closed the case in 2017. Yugoslav President Slobodan Milošević blamed international peacekeeping forces for the massacre while VJ General Nebojša Pavković claimed the right to send Yugoslav troops back into Kosovo if the United Nations were not able to control the province. ==See also==