Battle of Vukovar August – November 1991
The Battle of Vukovar was an 87-day siege of Vukovar in eastern Croatia by the Yugoslav People ' s Army ( JNA ), supported by various paramilitary forces from Serbia , between August and November 1991 . Before the Croatian War of Independence the Baroque town was a prosperous , mixed community of Croats , Serbs and other ethnic groups . As Yugoslavia began to break up , Serbia ' s President Slobodan Milošević and Croatia ' s President Franjo Tuđman began pursuing nationalist politics . In 1990 , an armed insurrection was started by Croatian Serb militias , supported by the Serbian government and paramilitary groups , who seized control of Serb-populated areas of Croatia . The JNA began to intervene in favour of the rebellion , and conflict broke out in the eastern Croatian region of Slavonia in May 1991 . In August , the JNA launched a full-scale attack against Croatian-held territory in eastern Slavonia , including Vukovar .
Vukovar was defended by around 1,800 lightly armed soldiers of the Croatian National Guard ( ZNG ) and civilian volunteers , against as many as 36,000 JNA soldiers and Serb paramilitaries equipped with heavy armour and artillery . During the battle , shells and rockets were fired into the town at a rate of up to 12,000 a day . At the time , it was the fiercest and most protracted battle seen in Europe since 1945 , and Vukovar was the first major European town to be entirely destroyed since the Second World War .