Panda Bar massacre

Panda Bar massacre
LocationPeć , Kosovo, FR Yugoslavia
Date14 December 1998 (UTC+1)
TargetSerbian civilians
WeaponsAutomatic rifles
Deaths6
Injured15
PerpetratorUnknown

The Panda Bar massacre[1] (Serbian: Масакр у Панда Бару, romanizedMasakr u Panda Baru), alternatively known as the Panda Café attack (Serbian: Напад на кафић "Панда", romanizedNapad na kafić "Panda"),[2] was an attack on Serbian civilians in the city of Peć, Kosovo on the night of 14–15 December 1998. Two masked men opened fire into a coffeehouse,[3] killing six Serb youths and wounding 15 others.[4][5]

The attack came at a time of heightened tensions due to an orchestrated ambush by the Serbian police against the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) who were smuggling weapons and supplies from Albania.[6] The Panda Bar attack appeared as a reprisal,[6] and broke the brief cease-fire between the Albanian and Serbian forces during the Kosovo War.[7] The KLA was accused, but did not accept responsibility at the time.[6] Six Albanian young men were arrested and tortured in custody at the time, but acquitted in the trial. However, the President of Serbia, Aleksandar Vučić, stated in 2013 that there was no evidence that Albanians were responsible for this attack.[8]

Speculation that the crime may have been committed by the State Security Directorate had been put forward in the past, but the crime remained unsolved as no new evidence had come forward for a long time.[9] Among Kosovo Albanians, the Panda Bar massacre is considered to have been used as a pretext for the attacks of the Serbian army and police against Albanian villages.[9]

  1. ^ Landis & Albert 2012, p. 356, Aertsen et al. 2013, p. 83
  2. ^ NIN: nedeljne informativne novine. Politika. March 2007.
  3. ^ Aertsen et al. 2013, p. 83.
  4. ^ Holbrooke and Hill.
  5. ^ Kosovo: the road to war Archived October 20, 2008, at the Wayback Machine
  6. ^ a b c Bellamy 2002, p. 112.
  7. ^ Landis & Albert 2012, p. 356.
  8. ^ Cite error: The named reference :0 was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  9. ^ a b Rudic, Filip; Haxhiaj, Rexhepe (2018). "Kosovo's Panda Café Massacre Mystery Unsolved 20 Years On".