page_title: Petar Baćović
section_title: Capture of Foča and massacres of Muslims and Croats
hierarchical_section_title: Petar Baćović / World War II / Capture of Foča and massacres of Muslims and Croats
context_page_description: Petar Baćović was a Bosnian Serb reserve army officer, lawyer, and then a Chetnik commander within occupied Yugoslavia during World War II. From the summer of 1941 until April 1942, he headed the cabinet of the Ministry of Internal Affairs for Milan Nedić's puppet Government of National Salvation in Belgrade. In July 1942, Baćović was appointed by the Chetnik leader Draža Mihailović and his Supreme Command as the commander of the "Chetnik Operational Units in eastern Bosnia and Herzegovina" during which he collaborated with the Italians and Germans in actions against the Yugoslav Partisans.
  Along with other Chetnik commanders, Baćović carried out numerous massacres of Bosnian Muslim and Catholic civilians and those sympathetic to the Partisan movement. In April 1945, he was captured near Banja Luka by elements of the Armed Forces of the Independent State of Croatia along with Chetnik leaders Pavle Đurišić and Zaharije Ostojić, and Chetnik ideologue Dragiša Vasić in what was apparently a trap. According to some sources, Baćović and the others were taken to the area of the Jasenovac concentration camp, where they were killed.
context_section_description: On 19 August, Chetniks commanded by Ostojić, but drawn mainly from Đurišić's Lim-Sandžak Chetnik Detachment and acting on the orders of Mihailović, attacked and captured the eastern Bosnian town of Foča, which had been abandoned by the Partisans in June and had then been occupied by NDH forces. After a two-hour battle, Chetnik units entered Foča and began massacring the Muslim population of the town, regardless of gender and age. According to the initial Chetnik reports, a total of 1,000 people were killed, including about 450 members of the Croatian Home Guard and Ustaše Militia, as well as around 300 women and children. Later Chetnik reports stated that between 2,000 and 3,000 were killed in Foča after its capture. A few days after they seized Foča, Baćović and Jevđević reported to Mihailović that all traces of the massacre had been removed and they had formally announced that those responsible for looting and killing had been shot. Eight days after the capture of Foča, Baćović wrote, "on that occasion 1,200 Ustaše in uniform and about 1,000 compromised Muslims perished, while we suffered only four dead and five wounded".
  On a field near Ustikolina and Jahorina in eastern Bosnia, the Chetniks of Baćović and Ostojić massacred about 2,500 Muslims and burned a number of villages. Baćović also killed a number of Partisan sympathizers elsewhere. In September 1942, Baćović completed a tour of Chetnik units in Herzegovina, and reported that the morale of the population was excellent and that the actions of the Ustaše and Partisans were drawing the populace to the Chetniks. That same month, his Chetniks killed 900 Croats in the coastal town of Makarska. Baćović's reports made it plain that his forces were conducting planned operations to kill or drive out the Muslim and Catholic population of Herzegovina. One of these reports stated that during reprisal attacks against the towns of Ljubuški in western Herzegovina and Imotski in the Dalmatian hinterland, his Chetniks had skinned alive three Catholic priests, killed all men over fifteen, and razed 17 villages.
caption: Baćović's Chetniks killed 900 Croats in the coastal town of Makarska.
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