REPORT FROM THE WAR ZONE
Yugoslavs resolute as bombs fall everywhere
By Sara
Flounders and Gloria La Riva
Belgrade, Yugoslavia
May 18--Tonight at 11:30 p.m. two huge detonations destroyed
Yugopetrol's last remaining fuel-storage facility in Belgrade,
a little over a mile from our hotel.
We raced to the scene through darkened streets to witness
with our own eyes the latest crime of U.S. and NATO forces. The
truth is inescapable: this war of aggression on Yugoslavia is a
war against the people.
Today at the Clinical Center of Serbia, we witnessed
patients with truly horrifying injuries. Dr. Vladimir Yucic was
about to leave for the heavily bombed city of Nis to perform
emergency surgery on injured patients there. He told us, "I am
a specialist in liver surgery. This hospital was about to
introduce liver transplants. Instead I'm doing amputations on
people wounded by bombs."
Dr. Sonja Pavlovic works in intensive care. She took us to
meet Nada, a 15-year-old girl whose legs had been mangled by a
cluster bomb. The child's family is Serbian and lives in
Kosovo. Because of the relentless bombing there, they sent her
by bus to relatives in Montenegro. The bus was hit by a NATO
cluster bomb. She is now paralyzed from the waist down, with
shrapnel throughout her body.
NATO bombers have a diabolical practice: they drop a second
missile minutes after the first, just as rescue teams
arrive.
We spoke with two men from civil defense who had gone to
rescue workers in the army headquarters in downtown Belgrade.
As their vehicle approached the damaged building, a second bomb
hit. One of the men whispered in great pain that a co-worker
had died when they were blown into the air. He said he knew "in
a millisecond" that his own legs had been blown off.
The other patient, Nebojsa Starcevic, has had reconstructive
surgery that doctors hope will save his leg.
These two people were courageous not only in their struggle
to survive, but in telling us their story and reliving the
horror. Belgrade's top official for civil defense was also a
patient in the ICU unit.
Dr. Pavlovic said, "These men are truly our heroes because
they know of the second bombs and still rush to the scene to
recover the wounded and dead."
During the day, people fill the streets of Belgrade and
other cities, shopping, going to work. Life seems normal. But
when the air-raid sirens go off, their lives can be turned
upside down in an instant.
This afternoon at 3 p.m. we stood on a balcony in downtown
Belgrade, about to head out to a refugee camp at Rakovica, a
suburb 15 minutes away that had recently been
bombed. Suddenly the sirens sounded. Within minutes came an
announcement that bombs were dropping once again on
Rakovica.
Yugoslavia has no high-tech weapons that could possibly take
on the Pentagon. So what are NATO's targets?
In 50 days of bombing, NATO's goal has been to break the
Yugoslav people's resistance to an army of foreign
occupation--the main demand presented by the U.S. at
Rambouillet before the bombing began.
The list of NATO military targets includes schools,
hospitals, heating plants, communication grids, fertilizer
plants to undermine this rich agricultural country, television
and radio stations, cultural and religious sites, bus and train
stations, and housing units on busy downtown streets.
All government and municipal services, fuel supplies and
bridges have been targeted.
To drive from Budapest, Hungary, to Belgrade we had to take
back roads. All the main highways, including bridges and
overpasses, had been bombed and were impassable.
The countryside is intensely green. Fields have just been
planted and new plants peek up in neat rows.
Between Novi Sad and Belgrade, we came on a small gas
station still smoldering, flames licking pools of oil. Four
laser-guided bombs had hit it just hours before. Gas fumes hung
heavily in the air. Two gas pumps plus a small kiosk that sold
coffee, crackers and plastic quarts of oil were now melted
rubble. Several fuel storage tanks had been twisted into
grotesque shapes.
A small house across the way had only two walls left and no
roof. A haggard man--the gas station attendant--described how
he heard the first bomb hit and fled into the fields. He said,
"In one minute, I lost my home, everything I had, and my
livelihood."
Local people stood around, looking at the smoking ruins.
Novi Sad was our first stop inside Yugoslavia. Three fine
bridges once spanned the Danube River there. The oldest was
used by local people in the downtown area. There was a railroad
bridge and, further upstream, a new six-lane span for a major
highway.
All three bridges have been bombed and now block the Danube,
the major waterway of Europe. Some 150 vessels from Germany,
Austria, Bulgaria and Romania are stranded at the Yugoslav
border. Altogether, 35 major bridges in Yugoslavia have been
destroyed or damaged.
The largest and most advanced cardiovascular institute in
the Balkans must now be reached by a gerry-rigged ferry boat. A
large floating platform or raft with three engines at the
stern, it is able to carry several hundred people at a time.
Several other smaller ferries and boats shuttle back and forth,
trying to make up for the loss of the bridges.
Our hotel in Novi Sad had only cold water. The thermal plant
that had provided heat and hot water for the whole city had
been bombed. This is an inconvenience in May. It will be
life-threatening next January.
The people are calm
Before nightfall, we visited a bombed school. A huge crater
devoured what was once the schoolyard. All the windows were
gone and the walls were charred.
Yet, after two months of bombing, we found people
surprisingly calm even when night falls and the air-raid sirens
wail. Conversation continues. People move quietly to the
shelters.
The first day in Belgrade we spent touring bombed rubble,
from small houses on side streets to the huge thermal plant
that provided heat and hot water to all New Belgrade, a modern
development of 80,000 new apartments. Now its 350,000 people
are without heat or hot water.
The neonatal hospital in downtown Belgrade was a step into a
seemingly secure world. Premature and critically ill newborns
from all over Yugoslavia are sent here. Some 180 tiny, fragile
infants cling to life in incubators and on mechanical
ventilators. If the electricity is cut even for a few minutes,
many lives will be lost. But backup generators stand by.
Bombings just two blocks away, however, have already rattled
and disrupted these sensitively calibrated mechanisms several
times.
We met with six doctors. All, including the director of the
hospital, were women. All health care in Yugoslavia is free, as
is medical school. Since the bombing started, hospital
emergency rooms have quadrupled their beds and material.
Defense is well organized
The initial bombings targeted government buildings, but all
government ministries had already been moved and evacuated
weeks before. Many valuable or life-sustaining supplies have
been dispersed widely around the country. Air-raid shelters are
well-stocked and marked. Even little children can recite
air-raid warning procedures.
Hundreds of thousands of people have been on the move for
several years, as Yugoslavia was being dismembered under the
pressures of Western imperialism. With many refugees from the
Krajina in Croatia, from Bosnia, and now from Kosovo, housing
is packed.
Before the bombing, big apartment blocks were going up
everywhere. The cranes can still be seen on the skyline. But
all work has now been halted.
Even before the latest bombings--the heaviest of the
war--half a million jobs had been lost as plants and
infrastructure were destroyed. However, the government
continues to issue paychecks so no one starves.
We visited Nis, one of the most heavily bombed cities in
southern Serbia, just north of the province of Kosovo. The
bridge we took coming into the city was blown up just a half
hour after we passed over it. We had to take a different route
on our return to Belgrade.
Nis is a city of 250,000. We saw destruction to a flour
mill, a bus station, and to many little houses all along the
road. Huge gasoline holding tanks that provided heating and
cooking fuel for 800,000 people in the entire region were
destroyed.
In one of the worst crimes, the central market of Nis was
hit at noon on May 7. Eleven people were killed and scores
injured. A hospital with a red cross clearly marked on the roof
was hit with cluster bombs. In one area of a few blocks, 1,300
bomblets were dropped.
Cluster and fragmentation bombs are anti-personnel weapons
banned by all international conventions. One bomb full of
razor-sharp ribbons of steel can shred an area the size of a
football field.
On grassy lawns and pathways, unexploded cluster bombs are
marked with bright ribbons and signs so people will avoid
stepping on them.
Also bombed was the Greek consulate. As with China, there is
tremendous popular sentiment for Yugoslavia in Greece.
At the Nis tobacco factory, a worker named Miloye told us,
"Planes are constantly flying overhead but we come to work
every day." Asked if he was afraid, he said, "Of course, but we
must work because without work there is no life." The factory
employs 3,000 workers and has been bombed on three separate
occasions.
Miloye spoke about his eight-month-old daughter. "I wonder
what her future will be. I hope this will be over so when she
grows up to be a woman she can't even remember it."
La Riva and Flounders went to Yugoslavia May 14 with an
International Action Center delegation headed by former U.S.
Attorney General Ramsey Clark. They were accompanied by
Pacifica radio news reporter Jeremy Scahill. La Riva, who also
visited Belgrade with Clark in the first week of the bombing,
is making a video, "NATO Targets." Flounders is an editor and
co-author of the book "NATO in the Balkans." Scahill will be
filing twice-daily reports from Yugoslavia to over 200 U.S.
radio stations.
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