Death After Truce

We went to positions taken by Serbian police near Malisevo on Sunday, October 18. We ignored the most basic instructions not to travel at night. We arrived at dusk near a gas station in Malisevo, where a policeman was killed and another three were wounded in the past week.

The idea was to witness a KLA attack that usually starts at 9 p.m. or so. Serb policemen are not allowed to take any action since Milosevic and Holbrooke signed the long-awaited peace treaty. They now have to protect themselves from snipers less than 200 yards away, and they only have bags full of sand and pieces of concrete to duck behind.
We were drinking coffee when several policemen admitted that they feared for their own skins, and let alone ours. They asked us if we were afraid, and told us that we were insane when we said we weren’t sure. NATO reconnaissance aircraft were the main attraction of the evening while we waited for the attack. The sky was clear, so it was easy to see them. The policemen said that two auto-piloted aircraft had been flying over their heads for days.

It was past nine o’clock, but there was no attack. The watch reported movement, but their commander told them to keep watching and reporting without taking any action. It was dark as hell.

After a nerve-racking hour of waiting and brief consultations with a reporter who brought us to Draginje, we decided to head for Malisevo in our vehicle without turning the lights on. We thought that it would be the easiest way to get back to Pristina.

The most petrifying part of the night was driving in complete darkness with no lights on. There has been no electricity in the Malisevo area for quite some time. Police units that have floodlights near their positions are reluctant to turn them on, fearing an immediate attack.

Our photographer was the navigator as we drove at 120 kilometres per hour. We occasionally saw the head lights of a police jeep in the distance. We had to turn on our own lights when we go to the hill above the village. The lights of another car were the most beautiful thing we had seen for a while.

However, that’s when other unpleasant events started happening. When the police turned their lights on, the mad race against time to get to Pristina started. At times, we thought that we would end up in the ditch by the side of the road. We saw flashes of something in the bushes several times along the way, but we were too busy driving to pay any attention. Suddenly, the police officer driving the other vehicle turned his lights off and slammed on the breaks in the village of Orlate. We only just managed to avoid what would have been a heavy collision with an armoured vehicle in the middle of the road.

As soon as we got out of our vehicles, we were told to lie down and take cover. The policemen who were escorting us grabbed their rifles and ran in an unknown direction.
We could see another armoured vehicle some 100 metres away from us. Its lights illuminated an isolated house and the area around it. Silhouttes of people running in its direction appeared and then vanished into the darkness again. “Something terrible happened here, I have to go and see”, said our photographer as he picked up his cameras and vanished into the night. Five minutes later, a man wearing a police uniform appeared. “Bring those reporters so that they can see how the KLA kills our men”, he said. We ran after him and got to the house. There was an ambulance by the armoured vehicle.

“We’ve got three dead and two badly wounded”, somebody said. “What media are you from”, said a man with blood on his hands lying on a host of blankets. “It’s OK, they are OK”, replied another police officer. We went up the stairs and by the sand bags into the living room. Several policemen were trying to put their wounded comrade onto some blankets and into the ambulance. He was in pain and screaming in anguish. A doctor, or maybe he was just a medic, was telling someone over the radio that they should make a helicopter available. “He is in very bad shape”, somebody said before we went further upstairs into the attic. That’s whe we saw the most horrible sight of all.

A petroleum lamp vaguely illuminated the area. Two policemen just sat there and seemed to stare right into the distance. Up in the attic hole lied the third, next to something that resembled a bed. The smell of blood and explosives was everywhere. “Don’t step into the blood stains, we are going to carry out an investigation”, said one of their comrades. Somebody decided to take us outside until they dealt with their wounded colleague, whose screams were getting louder by the second. When we went back in after ten minutes or so, we could see the whole scene. Another body lied right next to the attic hole where the third body was found. There was another body in the other room. We illuminated them with flashlights and took photos. “They threw a grenade or a rifle missile at them. Look at this, do you now see what’s going on here”, said one of the policemen almost sobbing. “OK, that’s enough”, his colleague said and we had to leave. We ran back to our vehicle and went off back to Pristina. The policemen at the Komoran checkpoint were conspicuously tense and anxious. We learned the next day that Komoran had been under fire that evening too. Kosovo Polje was shining like Las Vegas. “You are one hell of a driver. We were shot at least four times”, said our police escort with a broad smile on his face when we reached the Grand hotel in Prsitina. Only then did we remember the flashes of something from the bushes.