On 7 January 1993 , Orthodox Christmas Day , 8th Operational Unit Srebrenica , a unit of the ARBiH under the command of Naser Orić , attacked the village of Kravica near Bratunac . 46 Serbs died in the attack : 35 soldiers and 11 civilians . The attack on a holiday was intentional , as the Serbs were unprepared . The Bosniak forces used the Srebrenica safe zone ( where no military was allowed ) to carry out attacks on Serb villages including Kravica , and then flee back into the safe zone before the VRS could catch them . 119 Serb civilians and 424 Serb soldiers died in Bratunac during the war . Republika Srpska claimed that the ARBiH forces torched Serb homes and massacred civilians . However , this could not be independently verified during the ICTY trials , which concluded that many homes were already previously destroyed and that the siege of Srebrenica caused hunger , forcing Bosniaks to attack nearby Serb villages to acquire food and weapons to survive . In 2006 , Orić was found guilty by the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia ( ICTY ) on the charges of not preventing murder of Serbs , but was subsequently acquitted of all charges on appeal
attacked the village of Kravica
Kravica attack (1993)
Bosnian War