On July 6, 1995, Bosnian Serb Army artillery began a sustained bombardment of Srebrenica. The town was a United Nations "safe area," patrolled by a contingent of 400 lightly armed Dutch peacekeepers. General Ratko Mladić, commander of the Bosnian Serb forces, gave the order. His troops advanced from the south, systematically taking the observation posts held by the Dutchbat soldiers. Within five days, the enclave would fall.
The attack was the culmination of a three-year siege. Srebrenica, crammed with tens of thousands of Bosnian Muslim refugees, was utterly defenseless. The UN Security Council had declared it safe in 1993 but provided neither the mandate nor the means to defend it. The shelling on July 6 signaled the end of that illusion. Mladić’s forces cut off supply routes and overran the Dutch positions with little resistance. The peacekeepers' requests for close air support from NATO were mired in procedural delays.
This date matters not as a standalone battle but as the trigger for the subsequent genocide. In the days following the capture of Srebrenica, Bosnian Serb forces separated men and boys from women and executed more than 8,000. The July 6 bombardment was the first, irreversible step. It demonstrated the impotence of the international community's safe area policy and the calculated brutality of Mladić's campaign.
The assault solidified a tactical blueprint for ethnic cleansing. It showed how a determined force could neutralize international guarantees through sheer violence and political confusion. The fall of Srebrenica directly led to the NATO airstrikes that finally ended the war, but far too late for those trapped inside the enclave.