Chetniks elements under the command of Dobroslav Jevđević and Petar Baćović then massacred between 543 and 2,500 Croats and Muslims and destroyed numerous villages in the area.
Baćović was killed by NDH forces near the end of the war, while Jevđević escaped to Italy and avoided prosecution by the new Yugoslav government.
Mihailović was captured by the communist authorities following the war, tried and found guilty for the Chetnik actions at Prozor (among other charges), and was sentenced to death and executed.
[3] Initial armed resistance consisted of two loosely cooperating factions, the communist-led Partisans, and the Chetniks who were mostly led by Serb-chauvinist officers of the defeated Royal Yugoslav Army.
[4] However, the Chetniks, in their pursuit of an ethnically pure Greater Serbia, soon adopted a policy of collaboration and cooperated "extensively and systematically" with Italian forces.
[6] In September 1942, the Chetniks, knowing that they could not defeat the Partisans alone, attempted to persuade the Italians into carrying out a significant operation within their occupation zone.
[7] In early October, the operation was launched by the Italians targeting Partisans located northwest of the middle part of the Neretva River.
[10] The operation was coordinated with Germans and NDH armed forces located near northern Partisan territory in the direction of Banja Luka.
Three battalions of the 10th Herzegovinian Brigade, commanded by Vlado Šegrt, intended to assemble near Prozor, but withdrew and escaped on 6 October before the arrival of the Italian–Chetnik forces.
The nature of these tactics required the Muslims to "only be organized under the command of our [Chetnik] military leaders and in our struggle against the Ustaše and the communists with complete loyalty to the Serb population to repair the shameful role they've played since the capitulation of Yugoslavia up to today".
[16] On 14–15 October, the Chetniks, acting on their own, massacred over five hundred Croats and Muslims and burnt numerous villages in the process of the operation on the suspicion that they "harbored and aided the Partisans".
[19] According to Hoare, the Ustase complained about the burning of Croat and Muslim villages, and the associated killings of civilians, and this compelled the Italians to discipline the Chetniks and disband some of their units.
These sources claim that this was done because Chetnik and Italian atrocities caused great resentment in the local population, especially within the Croatian Home Guard, which felt obliged to intervene militarily in such instances.
[7] Hoare observes that despite the Italian reaction, they continued to rely on Chetnik forces and granted them "a degree of freedom in their treatment of the Muslim and Croat population".
It charged that under his command in "the first half of October 1942 in and around Prozor they [Italians and Chetniks] butchered and killed 1,716 persons of both sexes, Croatian and Muslim nations, and plundered and burnt about 500 households".
[19] Mihailović was captured and indicted following the end of the war and in 1946 the Supreme Court of Yugoslavia judged him guilty of leading a movement "which committed numerous war crimes against people" that, among other things, in "October 1942, under the leadership of Petar Baćović together with the Italians, killed in the vicinity of Prozor about 2,500 Muslims and Croats, among whom were women, children, and the elderly, and burnt a large number of villages".