[10][11][12] The siege lasted for three years, from June 1992 until 4–5 August 1995, when Operation Storm ended it after the Croatian Army (HV) overran the rebel Serbs in Croatia and northwest of the besieged town.

The Research and Documentation Center in Sarajevo established that the communities that were under siege – Bihać, Bosanska Krupa, Cazin and Velika Kladuša – had 4,856 killed or missing persons from 1991 to 1995.

Additionally, after Bosnian Serbs proclaimed the Republika Srpska in 1992 to the east, the communities of Bihać, Bosanska Krupa, Cazin and Velika Kladuša found themselves surrounded on both sides.

An artillery shell fired from Serb positions in the hill hit the town centre on 11 August 1992, next to a building converted into a shelter for Bosniak women and children.

Instead, as on every day since 12 June, when the Army of the Republika Srpska first began to bombard Bihać, people simply did their best to carry away the wounded and clear up the wreckage.

[13] The region had a mainly Bosniak population and, since the outbreak of armed conflict, had received some 35,000 displaced persons, most of them coming from Serb controlled areas around Banja Luka and Sanski Most in the summer of 1992.

[10] The deployment of UN troops in the area did not help: Serbian forces inside the UN-protected zone in Croatia hijacked an aid convoy heading for Bihać in April 1993.

[19] The entire Bihać area had only one hospital that had exhausted the last of its food and medical reserves by December 1994, so that the feeding of the sick and wounded, more than 900 patients, was limited to one meal per day.

[20] The enclave was additionally weakened when rebel Bosniak forces led by Fikret Abdić joined the Serbs in the fighting and created the Autonomous Province of Western Bosnia in the north.

On June 2 1994, the 5th Corps, under the command of Atif Dudaković,[21] overran and seized the territory of Western Bosnia and Fikret Abdić fled to Zagreb for safety.

However, the UN Security Council had failed to reach agreement on a draft statement that would condemn the Serbs' shelling of and entry into Bihać and call for their withdrawal.

Williams added that heavy tank and artillery fire against the town of Velika Kladuša in the north of the Bihać enclave was coming from the Croatian Serbs.

NATO immediately looked for ways to respond, but its forces were not permitted to carry out operations in Croatian airspace, and due to Bihać's proximity to the border, Serb aircraft could attack into Bosnia, then cross back into Croatia before being intercepted.

Under the cool leadership of the UNHCR Director of Logistics Operations, Peter Walsh, the refugee agency managed to breach the blockade in December 1994 and get 100 tonnes of valuable food aid into the pocket.

The United Nations Security Council Resolution 959 "expressed concern about the escalation in recent fighting in the Bihać pocket and the flow of refugees and displaced persons resulting from it" and condemned the "violation of the international border between the Republic of Croatia and the Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina and demands that all parties and others concerned, and in particular the so-called Krajina Serb forces, fully respect the border and refrain from hostile acts across it".

[11] The United Nations General Assembly also addressed the issue: "Military exercise activities intensified after the Bosnian Army 5th Corps engaged Serbian troops in western Bosnia [Bihać region].

At the same time, "Army of the Republic of Serbian Krajina" started with large-scale preparations for offensive actions in the western Bosnia theatre of operations....

[39] In 2012, the Bihać Cantonal court sentenced five former soldiers of the VRS to a total of 56.5 years in prison for murdering 25 Bosniak civilians in the villages of Duljci and Orašac in September 1992.

[40] In 2013, the Constitutional Court of Bosnia and Herzegovina issued a decision that equated the rights of former soldiers of the NOZB with those of the members of the ARBiH and the HVO.