[PEN-L:7311] (Fwd) REPORT FROM THE WAR ZONE - Yugoslavs resolute as bombs f

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Date sent:              Wed, 26 May 1999 16:50:47 -0700
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Subject:                REPORT FROM THE WAR ZONE - Yugoslavs resolute as bombs fall
        everywhere

International Action Center 
39 West 14 St., #206 New York, NY  10011
(212) 633-6646  fax: (212) 633-2889 
http://www.iacenter.org  email: [EMAIL PROTECTED]

REPORT FROM THE WAR ZONE 

        Yugoslavs resolute as bombs fall everywhere

        By Gloria La Riva and Sara Flounders, Belgrade, Yugoslavia 

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.

May 18, 1999--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 woman. 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."