In July of 1995 a fully equipped division of the Army of Bosnia and Herzegovina was illegally stationed in the nominally demilitarized and internationally protected enclaves of Srebrenica and Žepa. For reasons that still remain unclear, instead of resisting the Serbian advance on the Srebrenica enclave, the division, joined by several thousand mostly male civilians, formed a column and set out in military formation on a 60 kilometer trek through Serbian-controlled territory to the nearest Muslim-held territory in Tuzla. Along the way, the column encountered numerous Serbian Army ambushes and suffered considerable casualties resulting from combat and other causes. The largely unreported and ignored column casualties are legitimate from the standpoint of international law and should be viewed separately from the issue of prisoner executions.
Analysis of combat related casualties of ARBiH 28th Division in July 1995