Death in the House of Aleksandar Milic

Aleksandar Milic spent nearly thirty years in the Federal Republic of Germany.  Like many others who spent years working abroad, he decided to invest his hard earned money into a house.  And not just one, but three.  The one in Zmaj Jovina Street in Surdulica was one of the bigger and more beautiful houses in the settlement of Surdulica called Cubrine livade.  Beside everything that guest workers' houses have (solid construction, many rooms), Milic's house also had a large, well constructed basement which was unusual for Surdulica.  That is why since April 6, when NATO airplanes for the first time hit a near by barracks, at least two kilometers distant from Milic's house, at least several neighborhood families found shelter in his basement.

The same thing happened last Tuesday at noon when the bombing alert was once again sounded in Surdulica.  Beside the members of the Milic family, the best shelter in Cubrine livade provided cover, according to later claims by neighbors, for a total of fifteen people.  Precisely at 12:10 p.m., two of 15 NATO projectiles intended that day for Surdulica and neighboring military buildings hit the very heart of the settlements of Cubrine livade and Piskavica, making yet another, only God knows which "collateral mistake," as they put it cynically in Bruxelles, London and Washington, or a human slaughterhouse, as they put it with savage precision in Surdulica.  One projectile fell precisely on the Milic family house.  There was a crater with a diameter of ten meters left on the spot.  Dragan Jankovic, one of the rescuers who spent the whole day clearing the rubble and seeking the wounded, said that in fact there was no one to rescue.  From that which used to be the house of Aleksandar Milic, only one wounded person was taken out.  The rest did not survive.

For a hundred meters all around, there hardly seem to have survived a single family.  Journalists who arrived at dusk in Surdulica from Belgrade, one of the rescuers suggested that they should write how this part of the town will from now on be called Zalosne livade (Mourning Meadows).  Everyone down to the last person claims that this could not have been a mistake.  The first military building is at least 2.5 kilometers away from Aleksandar Milic's house, and some military warehouses as far as six kilometers.  The pilot would have had to have been blind, or simply a cold blooded killer, although at NATO headquarters they persistently claim that they have no such employees.  Jamie Shea, NATO spokesman, even claimed recently (after their pilots murdered around seventy people in the refugee convoy close to Djakovica) that pilots always release bombs in "good faith," observing "the highest democratic standards of NATO member nations."  Where it drops, nobody knows.  And it usually drops in some poor town, some Aleksinac, Grdelica, Djakovica, and this time Surdulica.  Always some difficult name.  So difficult that in that evening, for instance, a CNN reporter had to repeat "stand up" at least ten tames while standing in front of a completely destroyed house, not managing to pronounce correctly the name of the place above which NATO pilots once again dropped bombs "in good faith."  Dust and virtually numb with pain, local rescuers stopped their work for a moment to see how CNN and other big television stations are reporting on their tragedy.  Then they once again went back to illuminating the rubble with flashlights and to dig through craters.

>From the "Mourning Meadows" of Surdulica, journalists later went to the local hospital.  In the local mortuary, 16 killed lay covered in sheets and blankets in two rooms.  Eleven of them were children, ages five to 12.  Only a few of the corpses had a head, arms and legs.  Shortly before the journalists arrived, a small bundle containing bones and dismembered parts of bodies was brought to the mortuary.  The man who brought this bundle said that it was the corpse of a little girl.  A child which also sought refuge in the shelter of Aleksandar Milic's house while running away from NATO bombs.  Disgusted by what they saw, some journalists were throwing up in the dark.  Not far from there, an investigating judge, Milso Todorov, expressed concern that the number of dead is probably higher because only two destroyed sites had been cleared by sundown.
11 wounded were taken to the hospital in Surdulica.  One of them, a seventeen-year-old Boban Cvetkovic, from the nearby Vladicin Han, came to Surdulica that day to visit his friend.  He got shrapnel in his stomach.  He said that something suddenly hit, that he nearly went deaf from the explosion and that it appeared to him that there were many airplanes in the sky.  The investigating judge confirmed that the bombing lasted nearly full 25 minutes.

On the way back to Belgrade the monuments of NATO pilots' "good faith" are strung along like beads.  The "Mourning Meadows" of Surdulica, the bridge near Grdelica where the burnt train wreck still stands, then Aleksinac where the bomb missed its target by some 600 meters, also killing a large number of civilians.

What will the cynical "Jamie" say in the briefing tomorrow?  Will he designate the house of Aleksandar Milic as a strategic military target, or will he accuse him of building his hard earned house several kilometers away from an army barracks?  Will the quick Jamie criticize him for not building a stronger and bigger basement according to NATO standards?  He might even bring in some newspaper to the briefing, and utter coldly: "We registered another NATO triple-double.  We had 16 civilians killed, of those eleven are children, and for now 11 wounded.  Around 300 destroyed and damaged houses are not part of our official statistics."

Congratulations Jamie!