Speed Train 393 Tragedy

"I saw two rockets," stated the resident of Grdelica, Tomislav Ilic, in his interview with VREME.  "They flew above as, and at one point one of them seemed to have completely stopped, only to descend toward the bridge.  Then a huge thud was heard and everything around us began to break.  When we regained our senses, we ran toward the bridge and saw the train cars engulfed in flames.  It was a terrible fire and we could not approach to help the people inside.  They were all burning."

It was twenty minutes past noon on Monday, April 12, when the fast train No. 393, heading from Nis to Vranje, and continuing to Skopije and then Athens, passed through Grdulica, a small town in the south of Serbia, some twenty kilometers distant from Leskovac.  Only several minutes later, a powerful detonation shook houses, braking windows and smashing through doors and windows out of their frames.  The residents of Grdelica ran for cover, where they remained in fear of further attacks.  No one doubted the target of the attack   at the very entrance to the small town two bridges, a railway bridge and a highway bridge virtually intersect across the Southern Morava River, the destruction of which would result in traffic toward Macedonia and Greece being made more difficult, while railway traffic would have been completely cut off.  Still, what the bravest residents saw when they headed toward the bridge from where thick smoke was coming, surpassed even the worst fears.  On the rails in front of the bridge the cars of the passenger train were engulfed in fire, with body parts from passengers and the rail cars scattered all around.  The train was hit directly with two projectiles, while the third projectile hit the highway bridge, some hundred meters behind.

The composition of the fast train 393 included four cars.  The third car was hit directly, being destroyed on impact, while the fire engulfed and completely destroyed the second car.  The locomotive and the first car continued ahead another hundred meters, stopping directly beneath the highway bridge, while the fourth car, wrenched from the composition, remained on the bridge, having derailed.  The bridge and the rail tracks were not damaged in this attack.

According to eyewitness testimony, people came out in complete shock from the first and fourth cars, which had not been damaged, with the majority getting serious facial cuts from the shattered window glass.  Sixteen people were initially transported to the local health center, and those with life threatening injuries were later taken to the hospital in Leskovac, with one individual remaining in critical condition.  Nine corpses were taken out of the second and third cars, while one body was discovered in the river.  There is suspicion that the river might turn out more bodies in the coming days.  The investigation is made more difficult by the fact that there is no list of passengers who were on the train, that is to say that even their precise number is not known.  What is beyond doubt is that the train was only carrying civilians and that it was a regularly scheduled passenger train on international railway tracks.  Judging by the remains, the train could in no way be perceived as a military target or as military transport.

Beside the residents of Grdelica, the first to come to the rescue were policemen from the local station and personnel of the health center in Grdelica.  However, a serious rescue operation was delayed by a half hour until firefighters from Leskovac arrived with a large number of policemen.  The fire was put out in the space of an hour, but the red hot train cars could not be approached for some time yet.

Six hours after this tragic event, when journalists arrived to the place of this tragic event, the train cars were still ablaze, with the smell of burning being felt all around.  Many residents spoke about the attack with excitement and anger.  They expected an attack on the bridge, they said, for planes overflew this area in the preceding days.  What they did not expect was an attack in the middle of the day, when there is traffic on the bridges, especially on the highway bridge, otherwise called Sarajevo's Bridge, in memory of a brigade from Sarajevo which participated in its construction.  That bridge suffered serious damage with a direct hit from a projectile, with experts examining whether it will be possible to use.   In the meantime, transportation has been made considerably more difficult and is diverted to side roads which are not paved.