Ustasha militias and death squads also burnt villages and killed thousands of civilian Serbs in the country-side in sadistic ways with various weapons and tools . Men , women , children were hacked to death , thrown alive into pits and down ravines , or set on fire in churches . Some Serb villages near Srebrenica and Ozren were wholly massacred , while children were found impaled by stakes in villages between Vlasenica and Kladanj . The Glina massacres , where thousands of Serbs were killed , are among the more notable instances of Ustasha cruelty . Ante Pavelić , leader of the Ustasha , fled to Argentina and Spain which gave him protection , and was never extradited to stand trial for his war crimes . Pavelić died on 28 December 1959 at the Hospital Alemán in Madrid , where the Roman Catholic church had helped him to gain asylum , at the age of 70 from gunshot wounds sustained in an earlier assassination attempt by Montenegrin Blagoje Jovović
Glina massacres
Glina massacres
List of war crimes