Four men have been arrested on suspicion of war crimes against ethnic Serbs in 1995, after Croatia's military operation to regain territories occupied by rebel Serbs, police said today.
The four, detained yesterday in the southern Sibenik-Knin county, are suspected of killing four people in the aftermath of the August 1995 operation - dubbed Storm - which practically ended the 1991-1995 Serbo-Croatian conflict, the county's police chief, Mr Goran Pauk, was quoted as saying by the HINA news agency.
One of them was a junior officer and the others were conscripts in the Croatian army during the war. They are suspected of killing an elderly couple and one civilian, while three of them are believed to be involved in the killing of a member of rebel Serbs' armed forces.
The killings occurred in villages in the area of the coastal town of Sibenik, some 300 kilometers (186 miles) south of Zagreb.
Police said an ongoing investigation is to determine whether the suspects committed other war crimes.
The Croatian Helsinki Committee for Human Rights has said during and after the Operation Storm some 400 Serb civilians were killed.
Some 120,000 ethnic Serbs fled central and southern Croatia to Yugoslavia and Bosnia during the operation to regain those parts of the country.
AFP