Battle of Borovo Selo

The Battle of Borovo Selo on 2 May 1991 was one of the first armed clashes in the conflict which became known as the Croatian War of Independence. The clash was precipitated by months of rising ethnic tensions, violence, and armed combat in Pakrac and at the Plitvice Lakes in March. The immediate cause for the confrontation in the heavily ethnic Serb village of Borovo Selo, just north of Vukovar, was a failed attempt to replace a Yugoslav flag in the village with a Croatian one. The unauthorised effort by four Croatian policemen resulted in the capture of two by a Croatian Serb militia in the village. To retrieve the captives, Croatian authorities deployed additional police, who drove into an ambush. Twelve Croatian policemen and one Serb paramilitary were killed in the battle before the Yugoslav People's Army intervened and stopped the fighting.

The confrontation resulted in a further deterioration of the overall situation in Croatia, leading Croats and Serbs to accuse each other of overt aggression and of being enemies of their nation. For Croatia, the event was provocative because the bodies of some of the dead Croat policemen killed in the incident were reportedly mutilated. The clash in Borovo Selo eliminated any hopes that the escalating conflict could be defused politically and made the war almost inevitable. The Presidency of Yugoslavia met days after the fighting and authorised the JNA to deploy to the area to prevent further conflict but despite this deployment, skirmishes persisted in the region. After the war, a former Serb irregular was convicted of war crimes for his role in abusing two captured policemen, and ultimately sentenced to three years in prison. Four others were indicted in absentia but remain at large outside Croatia.

Wikipedia