List of massacres in North Macedonia explained

The following is a list of massacres that have occurred in North Macedonia and its predecessors:

Ottoman period

See also: Massacres of Albanians in the Balkan Wars.

Name	Date	Location	Deaths	Perpetrator	Victims	Notes
Massacre of the Albanian Beys	9 August 1830	Bitola, Ottoman Empire	1,000	Ottoman forces	Albanian beys	Albanian beys massacred by Ottoman forces.
Ilinden–Preobrazhenie Uprising	August 1903	Ottoman Empire (Throughout modern-day North Macedonia)	4,694	Ottoman forces	Macedonian Bulgarians and Aromanians	Macedonian Bulgarians and Aromanian civilians massacred by Ottoman forces.[1] [2] [3]
Takeover of Skopje	1912	Kumanovo and Skopje	3,000	Serbian forces	Albanians	[4]
Slaughter in Bitola	1913	Hospitals in Bitola		Serbian forces	Turkish patients	When Serbian forces entered Bitola, they killed Turkish patients to make room for injured Serbs.
Massacre at Ohrid	1913	Ohrid	650	Serbian forces	Bulgarians, Turks, and Albanians	Serbian forces killed 150 Bulgarians and 500 Albanians and Turks.[5]
Kokošinje murders	1904	Kokošinje	53	Bulgarian forces	Serbs	Bulgarian forces killed 53 Serbs [6] [7] [8]

World War I

See also: Massacres of Albanians in World War I.

Name	Date	Location	Deaths	Perpetrator	Victims	Notes
Bitola massacre	1915	Kičevo and Kruševo	555	Bulgarian forces	Albanians	Bulgarian forces killed hundreds of Albanian civilians and burned hundreds of homes.[9]
Štip massacre	1915	Ljuboten, Štip region	118-120	VMRO	Serbian soldiers	[10] [11]

World War II

See also: World War II in Yugoslavia.

Name	Date	Location	Deaths	Perpetrator	Victims	Notes
Radolishta massacre	28 October 1944	Struga Municipality, Republic of Macedonia (now North Macedonia)	84	Wehrmacht	Albanians	Massacre of Albanians by the armed forces of Nazi Germany.[12]
Bloody Christmas (1945)	January 1945	Throughout the Socialist Republic of Macedonia	1,200	Yugoslav forces	Bulgarians	Macedonian Bulgarian children, women, and men found in mass graves.[13]

Modern period

See also: 2001 insurgency in Macedonia.

Name	Date	Location	Deaths	Perpetrator	Victims	Notes
Vejce ambush	28 April 2001	Tetovo region, on the Šar Mountains, Republic of Macedonia (now North Macedonia)	8	NLA	Macedonian soldiers	Macedonian soldiers massacred by Albanian insurgents.
Karpalak massacre	8 August 2001	Motorway Skopje - Tetovo, near the village of Grupčin, Republic of Macedonia (now North Macedonia)	10	NLA	Macedonian soldiers	Macedonian army reservists killed by Albanian insurgents.[14]
Ljubotenski Bačila massacre	10 August 2001	Locality Ljubotenski Bačila on the Skopska Crna Gora mountains, between the villages of Ljuboten (Skopje) and Ljubanci, Republic of Macedonia (now North Macedonia)	8	NLA	Macedonian soldiers	Macedonian army reservists killed by Albanian insurgents.[15]
Ljubotenski Bačila massacre	12 August 2001	Locality Ljubotenski Bačila on the Skopska Crna Gora mountains, between the villages of Ljuboten (Skopje) and Ljubanci, Republic of Macedonia (now North Macedonia)	10	Macedonian army	Albanian civilians	Massacre of Albanian civilians two days after an ambush of Macedonian soldiers by the NLA
Smilkovci lake killings	12 April 2012	Butel Municipality, Republic of Macedonia (now North Macedonia)	5	Albanians	Macedonian civilians	Five Macedonian men aged between 18 and 21 years old found killed near Skopje. Subsequent investigations found that they were killed by Albanians.[16]

Notes and References

1. Book: Loyal Unto Death: Trust and Terror in Revolutionary Macedonia. 978-0253008473. Brown. Keith. 12 April 2013.
2. "However, contrary to the impression of researchers who believe that the Internal organization espoused a "Macedonian national consciousness," the local revolutionaries declared their conviction that the "majority" of the Christian population of Macedonia is "Bulgarian." They clearly rejected possible allegations of what they call "national separatism" vis-a-vis the Bulgarians, and even consider it "immoral." Though they declared an equal attitude towards all the "Macedonian populations." Tschavdar Marinov, We the Macedonians, The Paths of Macedonian Supra-Nationalism (1878–1912), in "We, the People: Politics of National Peculiarity in Southeastern Europe" with Mishkova Diana as ed., Central European University Press, 2009,, pp. 107-137.
3. Autonomy for Macedonia and the vilayet of Adrianople (southern Thrace) became the key demand for a generation of Slavic activists. In October 1893, a group of them founded the Bulgarian Macedono-Adrianopolitan Revolutionary Committee in Salonica...It engaged in creating a network of secretive committees and armed guerrillas in the two regions as well as in Bulgaria, where an ever-growing and politically influential Macedonian and Thracian diaspora resided. Heavily influenced by the ideas of early socialism and anarchism, the IMARO activists saw the future autonomous Macedonia as a multinational polity, and did not pursue the self-determination of Macedonian Slavs as a separate ethnicity. Therefore, Macedonian (and also Adrianopolitan) was an umbrella term covering Bulgarians, Turks, Greeks, Vlachs (Aromanians), Albanians, Serbs, Jews, and so on. While this message was taken aboard by many Vlachs as well as some Patriarchist Slavs, it failed to impress other groups for whom the IMARO remained the Bulgarian Committee.' Historical Dictionary of Republic of Macedonia, Historical Dictionaries of Europe, Dimitar Bechev, Scarecrow Press, 2009,, Introduction.
4. http://www.albanianhistory.net/texts20_1/AH1913_1.html Leo Freundlich: Albania's Golgotha
5. Book: Kramer, Alan . Dynamic of Destruction: Culture and Mass Killing in the First World War . 138.
6. Јанићије Поповић, Пламен, Приштина 1930, 25.
7. С. Симић, Српска револуционарна организација, комитско четовање у Старој Србији и Македонији 1903-1912, Београд 1998, 123-129.
8. Николов, Борис Й. Вътрешна македоно-одринска революционна организация. Войводи и ръководители (1893—1934). Биографично-библиографски справочник, София, 2001, pp. 158-159.
9. Justin McCarthy, Death and Exile: The Ethnic Cleansing of Ottoman Muslims, 1821-1922. March 1, 1996. p.183
10. Report of the International Commission (1919). Album des crimes bulgares : annexes aux documents relatifs aux violations des conventions de la Haye et du droit international en général, commises de 1915-1918 par les bulgares en Serbie occupée. Paris: Yugoslavia.
11. Willmott, H. P. (2003). World War I. New York: Dorling Kindersley.
12. Web site: Три масакри и злосторството кое трае – DW – 3.12.2020. 3 December 2020. 24 February 2024. Deutsche Welle. Zekoli. Arsim. Macedonian.
13. Bechev, Dimitar (2009) Historical Dictionary of the Republic of Macedonia. Scarecrow Press. p.287.
14. Web site: 9 August 2001 . Ten Macedonian troops die in ambush . TheGuardian.com.
15. Web site: Eight ARM reservists killed near Ljubotenski Bacila in 2001 remembered .
16. Web site: Adnkronos . 2020-12-15 . www1.adnkronos.com.