Market and hospital bombed, civilians slaughtered

NATO's war crimes

THE VICTIMS of the NATO cluster bomb attack on the Serbian city of Nis. Two of these pictures have not appeared in any British newspapers

LOOK AT the pictures on this page. They show the bodies of some of the 15 civilians massacred by NATO when it dropped cluster bombs on a packed marketplace in the Serbian city of Nis on Friday of last week.

The bombing took place just hours before NATO blasted the Chinese embassy in Belgrade. NATO bombed the market at midday-the busiest time of the day-when the market was packed with people doing their shopping. When Sarajevo market was shelled in August 1995 during the war in Bosnia all the Western leaders said Serbs were responsible and called it the one of the greatest war crimes ever committed. Isn't the slaughter of Serbian civilians in Nis marketplace just as much of a war crime?

The main picture shows the body of an old man who was selling eggs as he was hit with pieces of shrapnel from the cluster bombs. The bodies of nine people lay in pools of blood along the streets near the market. An elderly woman carrying carrots home from the market was hit in the head and her body dismembered by flying shrapnel. Another cluster bomb exploded near Nis's hospital, destroying the pathology unit and killing three people. A mile away a cluster bomb exploded in the middle of civilian houses. Three more people were killed, including 84 year old Gerasim Jovanic. Thirty houses were destroyed.

One resident of Nis said NATO planes are "showering our town with bombs randomly". At least 15 people were slaughtered and 60 other civilians seriously injured in the bombing. Labour's George Robertson recently boasted that Britain had destroyed its anti-personnel landmines, calling them "obscene weapons". Yet every cluster bomb dropped by NATO fragments into deadly particles and creates minefields which can maim or kill people for years to come. The town of Nis is still full of such unexploded cluster bomb fragments.

NATO at first tried to deny its bombs killed civilians and hit the hospital in Nis. They finally admitted that "a bomb went astray" and called it a "mistake". NATO spokesman James Shea even said, "I don't see anything which suggests this was a catastrophe." But UN High Commissioner Mary Robinson said that NATO's attacks on civilians means it could be investigated by the International War Crimes Tribunal.

DEADLY TOLL

"THE AIR campaign is working," said defence secretary George Robertson last week. Look at the evidence.

• On the same night as the attack on the Chinese embassy NATO missiles hit the Hotel Jugoslavia, killing a guest. The destruction of the hotel made 500 people jobless.

• Bombs hit St Sava's Hospital in Belgrade last week. Fortunately no patients were injured because they had all been moved to shelters. This involved transferring 100 seriously ill patients suffering from strokes and other brain injuries whenever there is an air raid warning. The explosions last week damaged vital life support equipment.

• On Friday of last week NATO planes bombed the village of Trakanic in Kosovo, damaging the homes of large numbers of ethnic Albanians.

• The Josef Atila primary school in Kupusina was hit by two NATO bombs last weekend. The explosions damaged a nursery school, a kindergarten, a health centre, pharmacy and houses. Kupusina is inhabited solely by ethnic Hungarians and there are no military facilities in the vicinity, nor have there ever been.

• The railway bridge on the Lopatnica at Bogutovac was destroyed by NATO last week. Several people were left wounded, and adjacent houses and buildings were severely damaged.

• NATO bombed a Greek relief aid convoy to Kosovo on Wednesday of last week.

• A NATO missile exploded outside a village near Sofia, Bulgaria, on Friday of last week. It was the fifth NATO missile to hit the country.

'Imagine your city destroyed'

"IT IS like a lousy war movie-dust, chemicals, flames all over the place. Imagine seeing buildings you grew up next to turned to dust. Seeing your city destroyed is so sad. We barely had the means for serious surgery before the aggression and now we have no means for serious surgery at all.

A few days ago NATO used special carbon dust and fibre bombs and shorted the electricity grid so that 80 percent of Serbia was without electricity the entire night and part of the next day. Can you imagine in Belgrade, a city of two million citizens, how many babies could not be taken care of during the night?

When the death tolls become public I am certain that generations to come will hide their face in shame. If all this does not induce drastic political changes I am through with surgery. I keep asking myself, why so much violence, hatred, destruction-is it so hard to be normal? If we were a species of animals I am sure animal protection groups would stand up against what is happening to us."

• PROFESSOR MIROSLAV MILICEVIC, Chief of Surgery at Belgrade University Hospital, in a letter to friends in London published in the Daily Telegraph last week