The Corfu Channel incident: Two British ships passing through Albanian territorial waters, near the Corfu Channel, fell into mines and their explosion killed 43 British soldiers and officers, and injured the same number of others. Great Britain filed a lawsuit against the People’s Republic of Albania at the International Court of Justice in The Hague. The Hague Court ruled against Albania, which had to pay £844,000 in damages to Great Britain. Due to the incident of the Corfu Channel, in 1946 Great Britain stopped the talks on the establishment of diplomatic relations with Albania. The recent opening of the Albanian archives has proven that the mines were laid by the Yugoslavs with the consent of the Albanian government, which did not possess the necessary instruments for their placement. Diplomatic relations with Great Britain were restored only in 1991. (Pictured: The scheme of mining the Corfu Channel.)
Text: Ana Lalaj, The Burning Secrets of the Corfu Channel , Historical Studies, no. 3–4/2010, Center for Albanological Studies, Institute of History, Tirana, 2011, page 87–117.
Photo: © Meçollari A., commander of the Naval Forces.
Graphic processing: AHCF
