In February 2015 , during the Croatia – Serbia genocide case , the International Court of Justice ( ICJ ) unanimously dismissed the Serbian lawsuit claim that Operation Storm constituted genocide , ruling that Croatia did not have the specific intent to exterminate the country 's Serb minority , though it reaffirmed that serious crimes against Serb civilians had taken place . The judgment stated that it is not disputed that a substantial part of the Serb population fled that region as a direct consequence of the military actions . The Croatian authorities were aware that the operation would provoke a mass exodus ; they even to some extent predicated their military planning on such an exodus , which they considered not only probable but desirable . 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 . Although it was very difficult to determine the number of properties destroyed during and after Operation Storm since a large number of houses sustained some degree of damage since the beginning of the war , Human Rights Watch ( HRW ) estimated that more than 5,000 houses were destroyed in the area during and after the battle . Out of the 122 Serbian Orthodox churches in the area , one was destroyed and 17 were damaged . HRW also reported 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 . In the months following the August offensive , at least 150 Serb civilians were summarily executed and another 110 persons forcibly disappeared . One example of such crimes was the Varivode massacre , where nine elderly Serb villagers were killed by the Croatian Army . Three Croatian generals , involved in the Operation Storm , were later acquitted by the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia ( ICTY ) of charges of committing war crimes and partaking in a joint criminal enterprise to force the Serb population out of Croatia
Varivode massacre
Varivode massacre
Serbs of Croatia