The Serbs of Mostar, Bosnia and Herzegovina, numbered about 24,000 at the outbreak of the Bosnian War in 1992, during which a majority of them were forced out, as part of an extensive ethnic cleansing campaign. With the city's post-war division into Croat and Bosniak (Bosnian Muslim) halves, very few Serbs have returned. As a result, its current Serb population, as registered by the 2013 census, numbers 4,421 or about 4.2% of the population of the town. History 18th and 19th centuries In the 18th and 19th centuries, many Serbs from Mostar were merchants and traders. They formed business communities in Vienna, Trieste, Novi Sad, in the Republic of Venice, as well as in the Republic of Ragusa (Dubrovnik), Zara (Zadar) and other towns (See: Triestine Serbs). The resultant wealth lead to a rise in their social status and funded a cultural and artistic flowering. In 1863, the construction of a large new church was begun, the Cathedral of the Holy Trinity. It was initially supervised by the little-known Spasoje Vulić, but was completed by Andrey Damyanov (who was also the builder of the Serbian Orthodox Cathedral in Sarajevo, constructed in a similar style around the same time). The works were financed locally, as well as by wealthy Serbs from the Austrian Empire and the Ottoman Sultan Abdülaziz (in the amount of 25,000 groschen). Vidovdan massacre Mostar was part of the Nazi puppet state known as the Independent State of Croatia, along with the rest of Bosnia and Herzegovina. The Ustasha fascist government was led by Ante Pavelić in Zagreb, and its view of Serbs was akin to the Nazi German view of Jews. The persecution of the town's Serbs began in the summer of 1941. The events of June 24–28, 1941 are known by Serbs as the "Vidovdan slaughter" (), as June 28 is Vidovdan in the Serbian Orthodox calendar. Mass arrests of town's Serbs by the Ustashas began on the afternoon of June 24, 1941. The most prominent Serb traders, teachers, and priests of the Serbian Orthodox Church were among those arrested, as well as workers and farmers, some 450 in total from the 24 to 26 June 1941. Some were killed on the night following the beginning of the arrests, while some were thrown into cave-pits and others were killed on the banks of the Neretva river. Almost thirty of Mostar's Serb citizens were thrown into a