AID worker Bill Croker, who repeatedly visited Bosnia to help war victims in the early 1990s, has died aged 77.

Mr Croker, who was born in Gateshead, lived in Oxford for 38 years.

Following a spell in the Army, the father-of-two divorced and moved to Oxford where he worked as an industrial engineer, living in Sandford-on-Thames and Grays Road, Headington.

In recent years, he lived with his nephew, John Bossom, in Bodley Road, Littlemore.

He died last month after a lung-related illness.

His funeral was held today at Oxford Crematorium.

In the early 1990s, moved by the situation in the former Yugoslavia, Mr Croker gave up working as a magistrate and became a volunteer for the Bosnian Aid Committee of Oxford. He frequently risked his life to deliver aid in trucks to remote areas.

In total, he made 16 trips to the war-torn country in eight months, once being held in jail for four days by the Croatians.

He was forced to flee the war zone in 1993 after colleagues warned him he was being hunted by Croatian military police who thought he was spying for the Bosnian Muslims.

At the time, he said: “It would be absolute suicide for me to go there just now.”

Mr Croker’s daughter, Anne Bates, 53, from Kent, said: “I was extremely worried about dad’s safety at the time, but I was also very proud of what he was doing.

“He said to me ‘these people are desperate and someone has to help them’.”

In 1995, when he was 58, Mr Croker was invited to a reception at Buckingham Palace where the Queen, the Duke of Edinburgh and Princess Anne personally thanked him for his work.