Hit-and-Run Raids
In early October, 1992, gunmen rampaged through Sjeverin, a remote Muslim village adjacent to the Bosnian border, wounding scores and causing substantial property damage. Hundreds of villagers fled, walking on foot through the mountains to Priboj town. "The Muslims' flight," a reporter wrote, "alarmed the federal authorities in Belgrade, committed to preventing the spread of ethnic cleansing across the Bosnian border. Yugoslav federal troops were ordered to reinforce special police units assigned to push the Serb irregulars out of the border villages.
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"[29] Gunmen launched a second hit-and-run attack on February 18, 1993, firing mortars at Kukurovići, another remote village. Three Muslims were killed, others were wounded, and the village's 1,000 residents fled to Priboj town, telling Serbian human rights workers that their assailants were Yugoslav federal reservists trying to push them away from the Bosnian border.[30] Serbian officials denied the charge, saying the attackers were paramilitary infiltrators from Bosnia.[31] The government sent reinforcements but said it was impossible to entirely seal the remote area to infiltration from Bosnia.[32] By focusing on remote border villages, the attackers—regardless of their true identity or patrons—were carefully avoiding a blatant challenge to Sandžak's law-and-order image. As long as the attackers did not descend from the mountains into Priboj town itself, the integrity of the Serbian core remained relatively intact.