Serbs' Republika Srpska. The Bosnian Muslim/Bosniak majority population of the Drina Valley posed a major obstacle to the achievement of these objectives. In the early days of the campaign of forcible transfer (ethnic cleansing) that followed the outbreak of war in April 1992 the town of Srebrenica was occupied by Serb/Serbian forces. It was subsequently retaken by Bosniak resistance groups. Refugees expelled from towns and villages across the central Drina valley sought shelter in Srebrenica, swelling the town's population.
The town and its surrounding area was surrounded and besieged by Serb forces. On 16 April 1993, the United Nations declared the Bosnian Muslim/Bosniak enclave a UN safe area, to be "free from any armed attack or any other hostile act", and guarded by a small unit operating under the mandate of United Nations Protection Force (UNPROFOR).
Srebrenica and the other UN safe areas of Žepa and Goražde were isolated pockets of Bosnian government-held territory in Eastern Bosnia. In July 1995 despite the town's UN-protected status it was attacked and captured by the Army of Republika Srpska. Following the town's capture, all the men "of fighting age" who fell into Bosnian Serb hands were massacred in a systematically organised series of summary executions. The women of the town and men below 16 years of age and above 55 were transferred by bus to Tuzla.
The Srebrenica massacre is considered the worst massacre in post-World War II European history to this day.
In 2001 the Srebrenica massacre was determined by judgment of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia to have been a crime of genocide (confirmed on appeal in 2004). This finding was upheld in 2007 by the International Court of Justice. The decision of the ICTY was followed by an admission to and an apology for the massacre by the Republika Srpska government.
Under the 1995 Dayton Agreement which ended the Bosnian war Srebrenica was
