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Today in history, 19 October: The attacks on Likoshan and Qirez

On 28 February – 1 March 1998 Serbian special police forces, using a helicopter, armoured personnel carriers and mortars, attacked the Drenica villages of Likoshan and Qirez after a shooting incident.

The recorded event closest to today's date in the archive calendar.

Date of the event
Place
Likoshan, Qirez
Evidence status
Evidence status: Documented. Supported by contemporaneous documents, institutional reports or independent studies that corroborate one another.

On 28 February – 1 March 1998 Serbian special police forces, using a helicopter, armoured personnel carriers and mortars, attacked the Drenica villages of Likoshan and Qirez after a shooting incident. HRW documented 25–26 Albanians killed and evidence of the summary execution of at least 14 people.

Full event record, with sources and map

Historical context

1998

The attacks in Drenica in February and March 1998 turned a limited insurgency into open war. By October, hundreds of thousands of people had been displaced and international diplomacy was directly engaged.

Read the chapter “1998: from Drenica to open war”

Sources

  1. [1]Human Rights Watch. Federal Republic of Yugoslavia: Humanitarian Law Violations in Kosovo: Vol. 10, No. 9 (D). 1998-10-01. https://www.hrw.org/legacy/reports98/kosovo/. Accessed 2026-09-16.
  2. [2]Fred Abrahams, Benjamin Ward. Under Orders: War Crimes in Kosovo. 2001-10-26. https://www.hrw.org/reports/2001/kosovo/. Accessed 2026-09-16.

This post is created automatically from the archive's checked data and from public news feeds. Not one sentence was written by artificial intelligence. Published: .