The Bikavac fire refers to the arson perpetrated in Bikavac,[1] near Višegrad, eastern Bosnia, on 27 June 1992 in which at least 60 Bosniak civilians, mostly women and children, were burned alive after the Serb forces captured them in the house which was set on fire.
After the captives were robbed, the house was set on fire and the occupants were left to burn alive.
The International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia Trial Chamber found that at least 60 Bosniak civilians were killed in the fire.
When Judge Patrick Robinson, presiding, summed up the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia's findings following the trial of Milan Lukić and his cousin Sredoje Lukić, he observed that: In the all too long, sad and wretched history of man’s inhumanity to man, the Pionirska street and Bikavac fires must rank high.
At the close of the twentieth century, a century marked by war and bloodshed on a colossal scale, these horrific events stand out for the viciousness of the incendiary attack, for the obvious premeditation and calculation that defined it, for the sheer callousness and brutality of herding, trapping and locking the victims in the two houses, thereby rendering them helpless in the ensuing inferno, and for the degree of pain and suffering inflicted on the victims as they were burnt alive.