O/T - "Internet Friends" is continuing the work that Anthony began with the Mother Tereza Organization for Kosovar refugees. People like these in this story are those we are trying to help. Anthony will agree that donations to the large organizations are NOT reaching these people. EVERY tax-deductible cent we collect is delivered to them.
THE NEW YORK TIMES, May 31, 1999
They Were Human Shields When 80 Died, Kosovars Say
By IAN FISHER
KUKES, Albania -- They had no choice but to spend the night
outside a warehouse off the highway in Korisa, Haxhere Palushi
said Sunday. There were 700 Albanian refugees like herself, and
Serbian soldiers herded them all inside the building's iron outer
gates, promising that they would be allowed to leave Kosovo the
next day.
Then, she said, one soldier clicked the gate shut with a padlock.
"One young guy said: 'Why did they lock us in? Something is
happening,' " she said.
A few hours later, just before midnight on May 13, NATO planes
again bombed the village, in southern Kosovo, killing what
Serbian officials and survivors say were more than 80 Albanian
refugees. Mrs. Palushi sat in a field all night watching her
4-year-old daughter, Diana, bleed from shrapnel wounds in her
left leg and then, at dawn, die.
The attack on Korisa killed perhaps more Albanian civilians than
any other in the two-month-old NATO air campaign, which has
been criticized for its fatal mistakes. At the time, NATO officials
said the village was a legitimate military target and was being
used as a military camp and command post. The Serbian
authorities, claiming that the refugees had merely stopped at
Korisa for the night, said the accident showed why NATO should
stop the bombing.
But three Albanian survivors -- women interviewed here today
for some of the few witness accounts of the bombing -- said they
had no doubt that they were put there intentionally.
"They used us as human shields," Mrs. Palushi said. "It was all
planned."
While the accounts could not be independently confirmed, they
appeared to give weight to similar allegations by the Pentagon
and NATO that Serbian forces have placed civilians near sites,
like bridges or military installations, that could be vulnerable to
attack.
There is still no way to tell from these accounts how widely or
sstematically such a strategy might be used. Nor are they likely to
quiet critics who say NATO's targeting procedures are not
adequate on a battlefield where civilians are mixed with military
targets.
But these accounts suggest that in Korisa, at least, the refugees had
been calculatingly placed in harm's way, if not to deter a NATO
attack, then to create the kind of civilian casualties that the Serbs
hope could erode support for the air campaign. NATO officials
say the planes had specifically targeted the building among other
military sites in the town without knowing that civilians were
there.
Mrs. Palushi described the bombing in one of the refugee camps
here, at the door-flap of a tent that now sleeps 19 people, 10 of
whom survived the attack. The survivors arrived in Albania only
on Saturday, and many of them still show signs of their wounds.
Mrs. Palushi's older son, Driton, 10, pulled up his shirt to show a
scar that runs from his navel to his sternum, from an operation to
remove a piece of shrapnel that pierced his back and wedged near
one lung. His cousin, Genci Ahmetaj, 4, still has a bandage on his
right foot covering his own shrapnel wound.
Purple scars mark the face of Genci's mother, Zyrafete, 30, and,
no doubt, there are emotional wounds as well.
The night of the attack, Mrs. Ahmetaj said she was sleeping under
the tractor wagon that sheltered her two children, along with six
other children and two adults. Huge explosions erupted. Tents
caught fire. Bits of the tractors blasted through the compound.
Children were shrieking, including hers.
"I didn't know what was happening," she said. "It was like I was
crazy. I saw my mother, and I touched her but she was dead. My
father, blood was all over his face."
She heard the voice of her 10-year-old son, Agon, from inside the
wagon.
"My son was screaming, 'Look what they did to my legs,' " she
said. "He started screaming: 'Mommy, my legs! Why don't you
come get me?' He was only 10 years old. I could only take the
little one."
"I wanted to go back and get him," she said. "But the other people
wouldn't let me go back and take my son. The Serbs were
shooting."
"But I know I left him," she said. "He was there, and he was
alive."
She said she heard later that Agon died at 7 A.M., next to an old
man who had found him and dragged him away from the flaming
warehouse.
"He kept saying, 'Give me some water,' " Mrs. Ahmetaj said.
She wept. "I am worried that no one could give him water," she
said.
She and others said Serbian forces opened fire on the refugees as
they fled from the burning compound. Those who escaped made
their way to Prizren, where some received treatment for wounds.
On Saturday, they were bused out of Kosovo by the Serbs,
apparently the first group of survivors from the Korisa attack to
get to Albania.
They were among thousands of Albanian refugees fleeing the
burning houses and looting by Serbian policemen and paramilitary
forces near the city of Prizren. Mrs. Ahmetaj's sister, Sahadete
Ahmetaj, 26, said hundreds of refugees had been living in the hills
near Korisa for two months, waiting to go to Albania.
Weary, on May 13, after some in the group approached Serbian
police officers, the refugees were promised that they could leave
safely the next day. The police took some 700 people to a field
for an hour, then moved them to a warehouse surrounded on
three-sides by a chest-high concrete wall and a fence with an iron
door. There they took everyone's name and birth date, Mrs.
Ahmetaj said, saying they could move on the next day.
But they had to spend that night outside at the courtyard of the
warehouse, she said. The Serbian soldiers did not indicate that
they were being arrested.
"They said we could only stay in that place," Mrs. Ahmetaj said.
"We were not allowed to go anywhere else."
The police officers then locked the refugees in and left the
compound, the survivors said.
Just before midnight, four American F-16's dropped what
officials said later was one 500-pound laser-guided bomb and
seven other bombs. The women said 84 refugees had been killed,
many of them burnt beyond recognition. A NATO official, who
spoke on the condition of anonymity, said that despite reports that
all the police had left, some police guards appeared to be among
the dead.
A spokesman for the Kosovo Liberation Army, the rebel group
fighting the Yugoslav Army in Kosovo, said today that the general
area around the warehouse was used to store tanks and
ammunition, though they had no information about that particular
building. The survivors said it appeared to be empty. The NATO
official said intelligence reports before the bombing identified it
as a command post, though he said it may have been vacated
before the bombing.
The Ahmetaj sisters said they did not blame NATO for the attack,
even if it was NATO bombs that killed their relatives.
"The Serbs are guilty," said Sahadete Ahmetaj. "NATO didn't
know they attacked us."
Mrs. Palushi, whose daughter was killed, said she did not blame
NATO either, though she said she exploded in anger when she
took her son to a hospital in Prizren and a Serbian doctor told her:
"You wanted NATO to help you. Look what they did."
"I was very upset, I was very nervous," she said. "I said, 'I didn't
want NATO. I don't want you. I don't want the K.L.A. I only want
peace.' "
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