Between 17 and 20 July 1998 the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) attacked the town of Orahovac and surrounding Serb villages intending to assert authority for the Kosovo Albanian provisional government through taking over a town and creating a corridor between KLA hotbed in Drenica and the Albanian border region. Around 60 KLA fighters and two police officers were killed, as well as five Serb civilians during the attack, while 85 Serb civilians were abducted by the KLA, forty of whom are presumed to have been murdered.