Background
As the Croatian War of Independence began in 1991, the region of Dalmatia (primarily Croat-inhabited) found itself on the borders of the (primarily Serb-inhabited) Krajina region from where the local Serb population orchestrated the Log Revolution in 1990 (a massive protest widely viewed by the Croatians as a declaration of war).
On May 2, 1991, the day after Borovo Selo killings of Croatian policemen, the police chief of Polače, a village near Benkovac, Franko Lisica, was killed by supporters of SAO Krajina. The next day, the anti-Serb rioting happened in Zadar and Šibenik. By the end of May, SAO Krajina had held a referendum and formally decided to join the Republic of Serbia.
On July 11, 1991, the Serb paramilitaries placed explosives on the railroad Benkovac-Zadar near Škabrnja.
With escalating civil disobedience concerning all conflicting parties over the next twelve months, the JNA forces became actively involved in August 1991, merely serving as mediators at first. Their first deployment near Zadar was on August 21. This role quickly changed, as the armed forces of Yugoslavia became more Serbianized, to that of open military support for the Serbs. In Dalmatia, Croat areas would soon come under fire from the JNA 9th Corps (9. Korpus, situated in Knin) under the command of the newly arrived Colonel Ratko Mladić who would later become the commander of the Bosnian Serb Army.
Read more about this topic: Operation Coast-91
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