Foibe massacres

[Kyt]

I hadn't heard of these until I read the following news story:

AKI - Adnkronos international Italy-Croatia: World War II killings were ethnic cleansing, Napolitano says

Seems to be a real lack of agreement to the extent of the killings, and even how to define them:

Foibe massacres were mass killings attributed to Yugoslav Partisans during and shortly after World War II against Italians. The name derives from the local geological feature, foiba (a type of deep karst sinkhole). This term indicates, by extension, the killings involving also other formations, such as the Basovizza foiba, which is actually a mining pit.

Some claim such bloodshed and the consequent Istrian exodus were a holocaust and an ethnic cleansing of innocent civilians; massacres and exodus were declared a democide and an ethnic-political cleansing by Italian president Giorgio Napolitano. Others assert that the number of victims was too small for this to be true, and that the killings were mostly restricted to fascists, both military and civilians, who might have had committed war crimes during World War II in Yugoslavia. A joint team of historians from Slovenia and Italy presented a view of the complex social and political relations in the turbulent history

Foibe massacres - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia