How can you not feel outraged after reading about the effect of the humanitarian nato criminals!
Tuesday, May 4, 1999
DISPATCH FROM KOSOVO NATO Bombs Kill 17 More
Civilians Assault: Bus is second one hit in two days.
"Nada was among 43 civilians
who survived Monday's bombing. In the room of 10 women
and children where she lay in Pec's main hospital, one of
the wounded was a blond girl about 4 years old. The
wedding Nada and her mother had set out to plan must
have seemed so far away. A piece of shrapnel had
severed Nada's spine like a knife, and the director of Pec's
hospital, Dr. Miodrag Jasovic, judged the girl's chances of
walking again at zero."
By PAUL WATSON, Times Staff Writer
SAVINE VODE, Yugoslavia--The war must have seemed
so far away when Nada Matanovic boarded the bus
Monday that would bring her high into the mountains, and
beneath NATO's bombs. A girl of 15, Nada got on the
express bus in the western Kosovo city of Pec with her
mother so they could go to Montenegro, Serbia's sister
republic in Yugoslavia, to meet with the young man who
had asked for the teenager's hand in marriage. She
wanted her mother's approval so that she would not bring
shame on her family in the farming village of Babajloc.
Around 11:40 Monday morning, just as the highway coach
slowly rounded a hairpin turn and stopped at a police
checkpoint in the snowy peaks about 12 miles north of
Pec, NATO bombs fell, killing an estimated 17 civilians.
Jagged chunks of shrapnel were sprayed into a white
trailer that served as the police post, and at least four
police officers and two soldiers were among the dead.
Like most governments in wartime, Yugoslavia's does not
release the official death toll for soldiers, preferring to keep
NATO guessing about how much damage it is inflicting on
armed combatants. NATO officials said they had no
information on the airstrike. Two days earlier, a NATO
bomb killed 39 bus passengers as the vehicle crossed a
bridge about 1 p.m., heading south on the main road to
Pristina, the capital of Kosovo, a province of Serbia. NATO
said it was targeting a key military supply route, and that
the bus crossed the bridge after the weapon was dropped.
Even though Serbian forces, and in some cases the fear
of NATO bombs, have driven hundreds of thousands of
ethnic Albanians from their homes and into refugee
camps, Kosovo is not deserted yet. Hundreds of
thousands of civilians, many of them ethnic Albanians, still
live here. As NATO intensifies attacks on roads and
bridges, many are left to wonder whether Kosovo has
become a free-fire zone. Nada was among 43 civilians
who survived Monday's bombing. In the room of 10 women
and children where she lay in Pec's main hospital, one of
the wounded was a blond girl about 4 years old. The
wedding Nada and her mother had set out to plan must
have seemed so far away. A piece of shrapnel had
severed Nada's spine like a knife, and the director of Pec's
hospital, Dr. Miodrag Jasovic, judged the girl's chances of
walking again at zero. "We were stopped at the police
checkpoint, and suddenly, out of nowhere, they started
bombing us," Nada's mother, Julka, said at the hospital.
"The bus was crowded with people, and after the first
explosion, we all tried to hide on the floor. "Someone
started screaming: 'Get out! Get out of the bus! They're
passengers, police and soldiers. Then, witnesses said, a
NATO warplane dropped a cluster bomb. It released
dozens of bomblets that exploded into bits of shrapnel and
blew holes about the size of baseballs into the asphalt.
One of the yellow canisters failed to detonate. It sat,
threatening to go off, just a few feet from the corpse of a
police officer in blue camouflage who died flat on his back,
far behind the bus. A metal label riveted to a round piece of
the main cluster bomb landed in the middle of the road
and provided these details on the bomb's origins and type:
"Sensor proximity FZU 39/B," the metal plate said. The lot
number was MN89F005-010, and the part number was
77757-10. It was made in the U.S. and the manufacturer
was listed as Magnavox. Nada's mother was dragging the
girl into a forest nearby when the cluster bomblets
exploded along the road, forcing dazed survivors to flee
deeper into the trees, Matanovic and other witnesses said.
Police and soldiers later arrived to transport survivors to
the hospital. When a small group of journalists reached
the scene about 3:15 p.m., police were loading the last
corpses into a truck.
All of Paul Watson's dispatches from
Kosovo are available on The Times' Web site at
latimes.com.
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