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The Zagreb rocket attacks were a series of two artillery attacks conducted by Serb armed forces that fired surface-to-surface missiles on the Croatian capital of Zagreb during the Croatian War of Independence. The attack killed seven and wounded over 200 Croatian civilians and was carried out on 2 May and 3 May 1995 as retaliation for the Croatian army's offensive in Operation Flash. The rocket attacks deliberately targeted civilian locations. Zagreb was the largest of several cities hit by the attack. It was the only instance in the entire war in Croatia that cluster bombs were used in combat. The International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) characterized the attack as a crime against humanity and convicted Croatian Serb leader Milan Martić of ordering the attack. ==Introduction== During the early part of the war, the Croatian capital Zagreb was spared from devastation, as it was far from the frontlines. Serb General Milan Čeleketić announced to the press on 24 March 1995, more than a month prior to the attack, that should a Croatian offensive be launched, he expected to respond by targeting the "weak points," that is, "the parks of the Croatian cities" and added: "We know who the people in the parks are; civilians." In May 1995 Croatia launched Operation Flash, which recaptured the area of western Slavonia (UNPA sector West) that had been under Serb control since 1991. In neighboring Bosnia, the leader of the Republika Srpska, Radovan Karadžić, threatened to send help to the Serbs in Croatia. Following the rapid collapse of the Serb defence in the area, Serb leader Milan Martić ordered Serb rocket artillery units in the self-proclaimed Republic of Serbian Krajina to fire missiles on the capital of Zagreb. Karlovac and Sisak were also subjected to retaliatory attacks. The Yugoslav-produced ''Orkan'' 262 mm Multiple rocket launchers (MRL) fires M-87 non-guided missiles. The ones fired against Zagreb were armed with aviation cluster bomb warheads (called ''cassette bombs'' or ''Jinglebell''), each of which contains 288 "bomblets" (smaller ammunition) which are ejected at a height of 1,000 meters above the target area. Upon impact, each bomblet explodes and releases 420 small bombs filled with pellets, the lethal range of each of which is ten meters. This means that each rocket releases around 120,000 of these pellets, which have been characterized as designed specifically to kill or maim local infantry.〔 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Zagreb rocket attacks」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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