civilians had taken place. Fleeing civilians and people remaining in United Nations protected areas were subject to various forms of harassment, including military assaults and acts by Croatian civilians. On 8 August, a refugee column was shelled. Human Rights Watch reported, in 1996, that the vast majority of the abuses were committed by Croatian forces. These abuses, which continued on a large scale even months after Operation Storm, included summary executions of elderly and infirm Serbs who remained behind and the wholesale burning and destruction of Serbian villages and property. Executions of civilians took place in and around the town of Knin. The majority of the population had already fled by the time the Croatian Army took control of Knin. At the end of the war, Knin's demographic composition changed greatly with the influx of Croat refugees from Bosnia and former Croat militia members. They replaced, to a great extent, those Serbs who fled during Operation Storm. In 2015, Amnesty International report that Croatian Serbs continued to face discrimination in public sector employment and the restitution of tenancy rights to social housing vacated during the war. Geography Knin is located in the northern Dalmatian region of Croatia, 56 kilometres east of the coastal town of Šibenik, at . The original Roman settlement developed on the foothills of the Dinaric Alps. It was on these foothills that the Knin Fortress was built. The source of the Krka river begins on the outskirts of the town. Climate Knin has a modified Mediterranean climate (Cfa, nearing the border with Csa) with hot dry summers and cool winters. Although the city is only some 50 km (31 mi) from the Adriatic Sea, an arm of the Mediterranean, the proximity of the Dinaric Alps to the north alters its climate. Knin is particularly known for its hot summers: temperatures reaching 40 °C (104 °F) are not uncommon in July and August. The January average temperature is about 4 °C and in August is about 24 °C Demographics According to 2021 census data, the population in Knin municipality was 11,755 and in town proper 8,317. 29,8% of population is of the age of 60 or older, while 18,6% of population is 20 or younger. Croatian Bureau of Statistics estimated the population of Knin municipality on 31 December 2020 to stand at 11,286. This represents a steep decline: ten years earlier, in the 2011 census, Knin municipality