JAW: "SHE DIDN'T FEEL LIKE IT."
Towards the end of the NATO bombing, Branka and Vladimir Pavlović went to the family house in Ralja, on Avala, with their children, five-year-old Dijana and eight-year-old Stefan, in order to get away from the constant attacks on Belgrade.
On the same night, May 26, 1999, NATO fired four missiles at a military warehouse near Ralje. One of the missiles missed its target by 500 meters and hit Pavlović's house, as well as Dragutin Ivanović's house. And his daughter Biljana Momčilović came from Belgrade on the same day with her son Nikola.
Biljana was killed in that attack, just like Vladimir, Dayana and Stefan Pavlović.
"We took out my wife first. She was buried up to her shoulders, and between her legs was a fifty-liter pot. A neighbor took my grandson Nikola to the infirmary, and then, after ten minutes, I saw my late daughter's hands on the couch," recalls Dragutin Ivanović. "She was completely buried and had a hole in her forehead from something." The grandson was saved by a closet full of linens. If she had just laid down next to him, next to the child, she would have been alive. But she didn't feel like it."
Just a few meters away, the drama was unfolding in Pavlović's house. "Vlada wailed and asked where his children were." He was naked and half-fried," says neighbor Milan Sutara. "His wife and children were left under the rubble." The shot was in her mouth, and one leg was completely bent. We took that shot out of her mouth and then pulled the beams with a tractor to get them out. We found the children huddled together on one bed, both of them dead. Vlada later died in hospital."
GRDELIC GORGE: "SILENCE AND NOTHING ELSE"
Since his son was in the army in Leskovac, Mikajlo Vuković from Smederevo set out on April 12 to visit him. He was traveling on international train 393, on the route Belgrade-Skopje.
On the bridge in the Grdelica gorge, a NATO missile hit the second car of that train. Mikaylo, like the other passengers, fought for his life for the next half hour.
Although his left eye was severely injured during that event and he remained disabled, Mikaylo remembers that he was alone in the compartment, that it was a rainy, cold day and that "Morava came". After the explosion, that idyllic image was no longer there: "I was floating in the wagon." I couldn't close my eyes, and I thought my eyes would burst from the pressure. I was saying goodbye to my family in my head, pictures were going through my mind, but I said to myself: 'What the hell, he's here.' The screams of children and women could be heard, but only briefly. Sobs, cries, maybe five, ten seconds. After that, tajac and nothing more. I found myself on my feet, feeling my stomach, but nothing. I'm whole," says Vuković. "I go to the door, but you can't get out." And I was covered in blood all over my face, I can't see well in my left eye. I saw fire in the hallway and it scared me. I can burn there or save myself somehow. I thought, just out at any cost. And through the window. Upside down. I went out to the right side of the carriage, and there was no one there. Field, arable land, mud. And I'm not allowed to cross the line."
Friends from high school, train drivers Boban Kostić and Goran Mikić were together in the Grdelica Gorge. Mikić recalls that, when the locomotive was at the end of the bridge, they heard an explosion and a bang: "The locomotive jumped off the rails, I brake mechanically. We don't know what it is, because no rocket was heard."
As soon as Boban Kostić got out of the locomotive, the train was attacked a second time: "I saw the whole rocket, complete." She was maybe twenty meters away from me. It literally flew over me and hit the road bridge." During that impact, Kostić was seriously wounded, and he still feels the consequences today. However, both he and Mikić, just like Mikajlo Vuković, remember the silence above all: "Believe me, it's like a movie." People come out, they are all cut by shrapnel, by glass, scared. But they left without saying a word. They scrambled around in a daze, but no call for help, nothing at all."
While help was arriving for the injured on April 12, a third attack followed - this time the missile hit the railway bridge again. "Maybe five minutes passed between the second and third rockets." The person who was shooting could see that it was a passenger train, they had the technology to see it," explains Mikić.
The NATO command later explained that the train had reached the bridge too quickly, and General Wesley Clark, pointing to the direction of the missile's movement, stated that it was an "accident".
The train driver Goran Mikić replied to these claims that the train was traveling at the prescribed speed of 65 kilometers per hour.
No matter how fast it was going, 393 people were killed, 12 were wounded, and three people were missing in train 16 that day. Five passengers have not been identified, and the exact number of victims has not been determined to date.
JOURNALISTS WITNESSES: "LIKE POMPEII"
Although he reported from various battlefields until 1999, journalist Aleksandar Vasović recalls that the scene he found in Surdulica on April 27 was somewhat similar to what he saw in Iraq. On that day, namely, two family houses were demolished to the ground, and 11 people died in the basement of one of them. "The house was large, three-story, with three slabs, with a basement and a garage. The bomb went through all three panels and I have the impression that it exploded among those people, in the basement. Those 11 people were literally blown to pieces." Vasović also describes that at the site of the second hit house, only a "hole a few meters deep that is slowly filling with water" remained, and that the entire neighborhood was disfigured. "After that, we went to the local hospital and that's when the coroner said to us, 'Kuku, people, what should I do?' I have seven extra legs,'" says Vasović. By the way, on archival footage from that era, in addition to the destroyed buildings, transparent nylon bags with the remains of the victims can be seen.
Similar scenes were recorded after April 14 and May 13, when NATO missiles hit refugee columns of Kosovo Albanians in Metohija. 109 old men, women and children died.
Journalist Aleksandar Vasović remembers that in one of those convoys there were tractors from a nearby farm: "I saw on one tractor the remains of people who had been drowned in metal." Like the remains of those people from Pompeii."
NIS: "I guess you don't want to attack me.? "
Nišlija Božidar Pantić decided to repair his car on May 7, 1999. Son Ljubisav has just left the house. A few minutes after that, Božidar will become a witness of horror.
"I look up and see that a parachute bomb is coming straight at me." And I say to her: 'Oh, my mother, you're not going to attack me, are you?' As soon as I lay down on the ground and covered my head with my hands, a terrible explosion was heard. I go out to see where my son is, and there is general chaos. Dead wherever you want. Cars punctured. Trees broken. There are no windows, no roofs," he recalled ten years later. "I went towards the market." A boy who sold brandy was lying there. In front of number 35 lay a woman who had been to the market. Across the road, in front of the egg shop, her husband was lying. In front of the Three Lanterns bar, the waitress Goca. She heard an explosion, went out out of curiosity, a bomb fell in front of the pub and killed her. In Šumatovačka Street, a pregnant woman, killed on the spot. There were still wounded, dead people. I was turning those people around. I was looking for a son," says Božidar Pantić. By a miraculous set of circumstances, Ljubisav's son remained unharmed. Unlike him, 18 people who found themselves in Šumatovačka Street in the center of Niš were seriously wounded, and thirteen died.
Alit Makić was one of those who were unlucky that day, but who even today believes that he is actually lucky to be alive. "I was outside my gate and I heard what sounded like a burst of machine guns." The shrapnel hit me in my left leg, which was amputated, in my right leg, which remained, and in my lung, which was almost completely destroyed. Nothing hurt me, but when I got hit, it was as if everything went numb. "I wasn't even aware that I was hit in the chest," Alit recalled.
The place where Alit was injured and where Božidar searched for his son is one of the busiest in Niš and is located right next to the Niš market. The attack was carried out with cluster bombs, which until that day were used only for military purposes.
MILICA RAKIĆ: "WE LOST HER"
Ever since the bombing began, three-year-old Milica Rakić from Batajnica was afraid to go to the bathroom alone. "Then I asked her: 'Do you want mom to go with you?', and she says she will go alone." As soon as I put her on the potty, I heard an explosion," says Dušica Rakić, who lost her daughter in that explosion on April 17, 1999. Probably the most well-known victim of NATO bombing to the public was killed by fragments of a missile that exploded in the air.
"Shellers were everywhere in the apartment and the bathroom, even the front door of the apartment was broken. Milica was bloody and when I picked her up, my first words were 'We've lost her,'" remembers Žarko Rakić, Milica's father. However, Milica was still alive at that moment. "They didn't want to tell us anything." I called the hospitals on call and they told us to just watch TV. And there was a subtitle that she was killed. That's how we found out. They didn't want to tell us," says Dušica Rakić.
She recalls that the death of her sisters was also very hard for her son Alex, ten years old at the time, because of which they sometimes had to hide their tears. "You find one of her hairpins or something in the house, it's enough to make you cry, and I had to keep quiet because of him."
Despite the tragedy, Aleksa got a sister, Angela, after a year.
Anđela celebrates her ninth birthday in April, and during the entire conversation with Dušica and Žarko Rakić, she sits quietly and listens.
Life, I guess, goes on.
