The war between the three constitutive nations turned out to be probably the most chaotic and bloody war in Europe since World War II. Numerous cease-fire agreements were signed, only to be broken again when one of the sides felt it was to their advantage.

The United Nations repeatedly attempted to stop the war, but wasn't particularly successful. Cyrus Vance and David Owen drew up a much-touted peace plan during 1992 but it did not have much result.

In June 1992, the United Nations Protection Force which had originally been deployed in Croatia, had its mandate extended into Bosnia and Herzegovina, initially to protect the Sarajevo International Airport. In September, the role of the UNPROFOR was expanded in order to protect humanitarian aid and assist in the delivery of the relief in the whole Bosnia and Herzegovina, as well as aid in the protection of civilian refugees when required by the Red Cross.

Initially it was Bosniaks and Croats together against the Serbs on the other side. The Serbs had the upper hand due to heavier weaponry (despite less manpower) and established control over most of the Serb-populated rural and urban regions excluding the larger towns of Sarajevo and Mostar. The Serb forces received the most accusations of genocide – cf. Bosnian Genocide.

Most of the capital Sarajevo was held by the Bosniaks and in order to prevent the Bosnian army from being deployed out of the town, the Bosnian Serb Army surrounded it, deploying troops and artillery in the surrounding hills. They imposed a blockade on all traffic in and out the city on May 2, 1992, starting what was to be known as the siege of Sarajevo.

The Bosnian Serbs constantly bombarded the civilians of all ethnicities in the city. They held on to a few Sarajevo suburbs (Grbavica and parts of Dobrinja), a part of which were also under control of the Bosnian government forces. The civilian death count in Sarajevo would pass 12,000 by the end of the war.

To make matters even worse, in 1993, after the failure of the so-called Vance-Owen peace plan which practically intended to divide the country into three ethnically pure parts, an armed conflict sprung between Bosniak and Croat units in a virtual territorial grab. The Croats and Bosniaks began fighting over the 30 percent of Bosnia they held. This caused the creation of even more ethnic enclaves and even further bloodshed. It was later established that Bosnian Croat military actions were directly supported by the government of Croatia which made this also an international conflict [2]. At that time about 70% of the country was in Serb control, about 20% in Croat and 10% in Bosniak (which represented 44% of population before the war).

Mostar was also surrounded for nine months, and much of its historic city was destroyed by shelling.

In an attempt to protect civilians, UNPROFOR's role was further extended in 1993 to protect the "safe havens" that it had declared around a number of towns including Sarajevo, Goražde and Srebrenica.

Eventually even NATO got involved when its jets shot down four Serb aircraft over central Bosnia on February 8, 1994, in what was supposed to be a UN declared "no-fly zone"; this was the alliance's first use of force since it was founded in 1949.

In March 1994, Bosniaks and Croats in Bosnia signed the Washington peace agreement, creating the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina . This narrowed the field of warring parties down to two.

A mass killing, widely considered the largest in Europe since World War II, happened in July 1995. Reportedly in retaliation to previous incursions by Naser Orić's troops, Serb troops under general Ratko Mladić occupied the UN "safe area" of Srebrenica in eastern Bosnia, after which 7779 Bosniak males were killed (See the Srebrenica Massacre article for details).

The war continued through most of 1995, and with Croatia taking over the Serb Krajina in early August, the Bosniak-Croat alliance gained the initiative in the war, taking much of western Bosnia from the Serbs. At that point, the international community pressured Milošević, Tuđman and Izetbegović to the negotiation table and finally the war ended with the Dayton Peace Agreement signed on November 21, 1995 (the final version was signed December 14, 1995 in Paris).
Civilian cars cross Neretva on a UN-built military bridge, near the destroyed bridge.
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Civilian cars cross Neretva on a UN-built military bridge, near the destroyed bridge.

The death toll after the war was estimated at 200,000 by the Bosnian government and this figure is still quoted most often by the western media. Research done by the International Criminal Tribunal determined a more precise number of 102,000 deaths with the following breakdown: 55,261 were civilians and 47,360 were soldiers. Of the civilians, 16,700 were Bosnian Serbs while 38,000 were Bosnian Muslims or Bosnian Croats. Of the soldiers, 14,000 were Bosnian Serbs, 6000 were Bosnian Croats, and 28,000 were Bosnian Muslims.

The United Nations agencies had previously estimated 278,000 dead and missing persons in Bosnia and Herzegovina. They also recorded around 1,325,000 refugees and exiles.

The Dayton Agreement divides Bosnia and Herzegovina roughly equally between the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina and the Bosnian Serb Republika Srpska, based mostly on their wartime borders.

The third incarnation of the war in the former Yugoslavia prompted the UN to establish the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia in The Hague on May 25, 1993, which started work in 1996. The warring parties committed war crimes, committed ethnic cleansing, formed internment camps often compared to concentration camps.