NIS, Yugoslavia, May 7 (AFP) -
Movieclip: Bombing Nis with cluster bombs!
Despair and rage overwhelmed Serbia's second largest city Nis on Friday after a hospital and a marketplace were hit in daytime NATO air raids which left at least 15 dead and 70 injured.
Nine people were killed when cluster bombs fell on a street leading to the market in the center of Nis, while three died in a raid on the hospital area, several blocks away, hospital officials told reporters.
Three more people died of their wounds after being hospitalised, doctor Ceda Kutlesic, head of the Nis medical center, said.
Jovan Zlatic, head of the local alert center, said that 50 of the 70 wounded were seriously injured.
Petar Bosnjakovic, deputy director of the Nis hospital, told reporters that "two explosions were heard 12 minutes after noon... as smoke was seen above the lot."
A dozen burnt out cars were still smouldering in the hospital parking lot, where witnesses said most of the bombs had exploded. All the building's windows were smashed.
Debris and broken glass could be seen in the hospital entrance hall, with the smell of burning pervading the area five hours after the reported blasts.
The road leading to the hospital complex was full of potholes, apparently caused by bomb fragments, with one corner house half destroyed.
A pair of slippers, with traces of blood, lay on the pavement near a burnt car in Ljube Nenadovica street.
The body of an old man, said to be 84-year old Gerasim Jovanovic, still lay in a yard near the hospital. Reporters were warned by rescue workers to walk in the middle of the street, since there were many unexploded cluster bombs around.
A yellow bomb, with the inscription CP FRAG BLU 97/AB, was visible in another yard, while two more lay in front of houses in the street.
Near the market, in the center of Nis, people stood in shock, crying or just silently watching as rescue workers combed the area. "It is obvious who killed these people; the NATO alliance," Nis mayor Zoran Zivkovic told reporters near the city market.
Three dead civilians, one of them a woman, could be seen lying on the ground several meters (yards) from the market.
Smilja Djuric, 73, said she had survived the NATO attack because she "hid in a room" in her house, in front of which two victims were killed. "If I had been in the street, I would be dead. I survived World War II, but I haven't seen anything like this," Djuric said, sobbing. Witnesses said that a waitress at a nearby restaurant was also killed.
Bomb shrapnel marks could be seen on the walls of the houses, while fragments of cluster bombs were strewn across two streets near the market. In Sumatovacka street a house and the car in front of it were partially burnt, while the windows of all nearby buildings whose windows were smashed.
Around 4 a.m. (0200 GMT), an industrial area to the northwest of the city, already targetted 13 times since the start of NATO bombing campaign on March 24, was also attacked.
But several missiles fell on the Nis suburb of Medosevac, where most of the houses along one street were destroyed.
Dejan Ciric said that four of his neighbours were injured in the raid,adding that more than 20 bombs had fallen in the area.
Some thirty houses were almost completely destroyed, while a two-meter (six-foot) deep, seven-meter (20-foot) wide crater could be seen in the middle of the street.
Radmila Mitrovic, 59, dressed in black, was sitting in front of what was left of her house.
"I can not even hang my clothes out. What have they done to us?" she said, still shaking.
Medosevac suburb is situated some 150 meters (yards) from Nis airport, the apparent target of NATO air raids.
NATO said Friday it was investigating the reports of civilian deaths.
Movieclip: Bombing Nis with cluster bombs!
Source….
- http://www.afp.com/
- http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/337989.stm
- http://www.bulgaria-italia.com/fry/nishospital.htm
- http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/337855.stm
- http://www.theguardian.com/world/1999/may/08/balkans
- http://edition.cnn.com/WORLD/europe/9905/07/kosovo.nis/
- http://english.peopledaily.com.cn/features/Kosovo/txt/050805.html
- http://www.globalresearch.ca/yugoslavia-78-days-1999-nato-air-raids-thirteenth-anniversary-of-nato-as-global-war-machine/29948