Mass graves of Croatian people killed in 1991 in the villages of Tordinci and Antin
Masovne grobnice Hrvata ubijenih 1991. u selima Tordinci i Antin

Summary/Abstract: Tordinci is a village situated north of Vinkovci at the left bank of the Vuka river, and is populated by the Croatian majority. It is surrounded by the villages of Ostrovo, Gaboš, Mlaka and Pačetin, where the Serbian national minority accounts for the majority of the population. Armed Serb civilians from these surrounding villages started provoking and attacking as early as the beginning of April 1991. The Serbian rebels set up barricades, they prevented people from entering Vinkovci, they attacked and robbed travellers, stopped busses and trains, shot at sanitary vehicles. The inhabitants of the two villages started organizing themselves around the National Protection Organization, which started arming and protecting the surrounded places. A makeshift road was made leading towards Nuštar in order to avoid the barricades in Ostrovo and to establish a passage to Vinkovci. The Jugoslav National Army (JNA) provides arms for the Serbian population in the surrounding villages, using even helicopters to that end. The armed guards provocatively wore chetnik marks and labels of «the Militia of SAO Krajina». During July and August of 1991 there were occasional mortar attacks on the villages, leaving casualties and big material damage behind. The village of Ćelije, populated by Croats, was attacked and levelled with the ground while Jugoslav National Army managed to evacuate a part of the population. The Vinkovci Red Cross organized the evacuation of women and children who were sent off to coastal areas, while at the same time members of the so called Militia of SAO Krajina took from Gaboš women and children of Serbian nationality across the Danube into Vojvodina. Until the end of September rebel Serbs, with the aid of the Jugoslav National Army never ceized to attack from the surrounding villages. After the entrance of the Jugoslav National Army and the Serbian paramilitary forces into the villages of Antin and Korođ, people also fled Tordinci, with only a few volunteers staying behind, who were joined by about a hundred members of the 109th brigade of the Croatian Army from Vinkovci. They organized a defense and managed to repel the attacks all until October 25th 1991, when the Armoured Units of the Jugoslav National Army and around 1000 infantry captured the village after fierce fightings. Croatian defense managed to destroy five out of 30 tenks and to incapacitate a large number of enemy fighters. They were forced to withdraw for lack of armour-piercing shells, with 8 dead and 9 wounded. The inhabitants, defenders and JNA soldiers were all burried by the JNA in a big mass grave in the center of the village not far from the Catholic Church. 37 people remained in the village of which 15 were Croats. The captured Croats saw the mass grave and recognized some of the casualties. Members of the UNPROFOR visited the site beginning of June 1992 and in Vinkovci gave the official number of casulaties; 208 bodies...

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