and slaughtered with knives. On 26 August, around 200 Muslims were killed in the village of Berkovići in Herzegovina. In September, the rebels captured Kulen Vakuf. Around 2,000 Muslims and a smaller number of Croats were killed in the Kulen Vakuf massacre. Victims of the massacres in Kulen Vakuf (which included hundreds of women and children) were shot, stabbed, hacked to death with axes and other farm tools, or drowned in the river Una. This was preceded by massacres of Serbs in the Kulen Vakuf region in a similar fashion in the previous months. In the same month, villages in Ravno and Stolac in Herzegovina were burned and looted by the rebels. On 3 September, Chetniks killed 425 Muslims from several villages in the Plana district, near Bileća. Most of the bodies were thrown into the Čavkarica pit, some of whom were still alive. Around 50,000 Croats and Muslims fled from rebel-controlled areas. The NDH lacked the forces to suppress the rebels and reluctantly agreed with Italy to bring its troops to the insurgent area. Italy used the uprisings to expand its influence and adopted a pro-Chetnik policy to destabilize the NDH. Many insurgent groups avoided conflict with the Italians and started collaborating with them. This led to a split among the rebels, as the Communists strongly opposed collaboration. Upon hearing about the uprisings, Mihailović sent his emissaries to assume control of ideologically close groups. In mid-August 1941, Mihailović sent Chetnik commanders Boško Todorović and Jezdimir Dangić to eastern Bosnia. He also sent emissaries to the rest of Bosnia and Herzegovina, Montenegro, and Croatia. Leaders of all groups that presented themselves as Serbian nationalist at least formally accepted Mihailović as their supreme commander. Provisional Administration of East Bosnia Under the command of Dangić, the Chetniks engaged in the robbing, beating, and occasional killing of Muslim civilians in eastern Bosnia during September. According to historian Redžić, the Chetniks themselves along with some historians labeled the crimes and atrocities against Muslims and Croats as revenge for Ustasha terror and atrocities against the Serbian population. Historian Tomasovich states that the terror tactics against the Croats were, to at least an extent, a reaction to the terror carried out by the Ustaše, while historian Marko Attila Hoare claims that the largest Chetnik massacres took place in eastern Bosnia where they preceded any significant Ustashe operations. Croats and Bosniaks living in areas intended to be