During the Balkan wars (1912-1913), Serb military forces attempting to assert their control of the region entered Luma and attacked local inhabitants, killed tribal chieftains, removed livestock belonging to the population and razed villages.
[3] Serb forces retaliated through a scorched earth policy and massacres of the population ranging from the young to elderly, both men and women such as barricading people in mosques and houses and then firing upon or burning them.
[2] Leo Freundlich, an Austrian correspondent who was in Luma at the time, reported that General Bozidar Jankovic, ordered his army to commit massacres of the Albanians of Luma resulting in entire villages being burned down with the inhabitants being burned or slaughtered alive.
All in all, twenty-seven villages on Luma territory were burnt to the ground and their inhabitants slain, even the children.
Women and children were tied to bundles of hay and set on fire before the eyes of their husbands and fathers.