Battle of Prozor (1992)

The Battle of Prozor is one of the first battles in the Croat–Bosniak war, the battle ended with the victory of the HVO. Just as UNPROFOR was dousing the last of the embers in Novi Travnik, a conflagration was about to begin in Prozor, some 40 km directly to the south. Prozor was an unassuming town of about 15,000 Croats and Muslims, far from the frontlines and noteworthy only because it had the fortune or misfortune to sit astride the main north-south highway in Bosnia, running from the sea at Ploče to Mostar and Jablanica, through Prozor to Gornji Vakuf, and on to Jajce and western Bosnia. Fighting began in Prozor on 23 October as a gangland dispute over which mafia organization would receive a delivery of black-market gasoline.

Battle
On 23 October the HVO attacked the city of Prozor with tanks, artillery, sniper fire and armored personnel carriers, and more than 1,500 missiles of different strengths fell on the city, targeting parts of the city mostly inhabited by Bosniaks. HVO forces brought up from Tomislavgrad shelled the Muslim sections of the town with artillery fire overnight. By the following morning, Prozor’s roughly 5,000 Muslims had fled southward and much of the town was reduced to a burnt-out wasteland. Members of the ARBiH were retreating from the city. The fighting stopped on 25 October 1992, with the HVO establishing control over Prozoro.