Prijedor, city in northwestern Bosnia and Herzegovina, located between Banja Luka and Zagreb, Croatia. It is located on the main road that runs between Zagreb and Karlovac in Croatia and across northern Bosnia through Prijedor, Banja Luka, Doboj, and Tuzla. The road was an important military highway during the civil war that broke out in Bosnia and Herzegovina in 1992. The region around Prijedor is a rich agricultural zone and is important for the production of corn and other grains, fruit, pork, and dairy products. Prijedor was a major producer of chemicals before the war. It also had food processing and other light industries. There are nearby iron and coal deposits as well.
Following the Dayton peace agreement in December 1995, Prijedor became part of the Bosnian Serb territory of Bosnia and Herzegovina, along with Doboj and Banja Luka. Prijedor saw some of the war's earliest and most vicious “ethnic cleansing,” the term United Nations (UN) observers gave to the Bosnian Serbs' campaign of terror aimed at forcing out Muslims and Croats. Prijedor is the site of Omarska, the primary Bosnian Serb prison camp, where thousands of Muslims are believed to have been executed. Before the war, Prijedor was a multiethnic city, with Muslims comprising nearly half of the population. Today, only about 900 Muslims remain. Population (1991) 112,470.
