ALLIES DENY KILLING 20 IN ATTACK ON SANATORIUM By Christopher Lockwood, Diplomatic Editor
BELGRADE claimed that at least 20 patients in a sanatorium were killed early yesterday in a Nato air raid on Surdulica, 180 miles south of Belgrade.
But Nato angrily denied the charge that it had committed yet another military blunder. Reports by Serb media said that the people, including some refugees, were killed when the sanatorium and a pensioners' home in the same complex were struck by five missiles.
A government official said that a search was continuing in the rubble and it was feared that the toll could be higher. The Serbs also claimed that a Nato strike on the city of Novi Pazar killed 10 people and injured at least 20 yesterday. Nato fired 20 missiles, targeting the local TV and radio station, but Belgrade claimed they hit an apartment building.
The reports came less than a day after an attack on a bridge at Varvarin - said to be a legitimate military target by Nato - killed 11 people who were using the bridge at the time to go to market. Nato provided no good explanation of why it attacked the bridge during the day, when it was in heavy use, rather than at night, the usual procedure.
Nato categorically denied, however, that it hit the sanatorium, saying it had successfully attacked a military barracks in the town. This appeared to be the same barracks that Nato planes had missed on April 28, killing at least 20 civilians by mistake instead.
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Los Angeles Times - June 1, 1999
ANOTHER AIRSTRIKE ON CIVILIANS KILLS 16 AT SANITARIUM COMPLEX Balkans: NATO insists it targeted military facilities. Alliance admits bombing is aiding Kosovo rebel army. By RICHARD BOUDREAUX, Times Staff Writer
URDULICA, Yugoslavia--NATO's intensifying air assault on Yugoslavia killed at least 16 more civilians Monday when missiles slammed into a sanitarium and nearby retirement home in this southern Serbian town after many of the occupants had gone to bed.
Four explosions crushed parts of both buildings shortly after midnight and left bloodied bedding and clothing hanging like macabre ornaments from pine branches in the surrounding 17-acre forest.
Rescue workers said they heard people screaming under the rubble and worked through the night to pull many out alive. By midafternoon, at least four people were still missing, officials said. Another 43 were listed as wounded, five of them in critical condition.
"I heard a plane pass and then return, and after that an explosion. The wall, the ceiling, everything fell on me," said Mica Pjevac, a woman in her 60s who emerged after an hour under the wreckage with a fractured right hand. "I kept thinking: 'It's over. It's over. That's the end of my life.' "
Monday's was the third strike on civilians in two days by NATO, which began bombing nearly 10 weeks ago to try to oust Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic's army from Kosovo--a southern province of Serbia, Yugoslavia's dominant republic.
Daylight bombings Sunday killed nine pedestrians and motorists on a bridge in the Serbian town of Varvarin and the driver of a journalists' convoy near Prizren in Kosovo. Serbian state media said 10 people were killed Monday by NATO missiles in the Serbian city of Novi Pazar, but this report could not be verified.
As President Clinton vowed to press NATO's campaign to stop what he called "appalling abuses" by Milosevic's troops against Kosovo's ethnic Albanian majority, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization voiced no remorse about the latest civilian victims of its own attacks.
NATO spokesman Jamie Shea insisted Monday that the bridge in Varvarin was a legitimate military target. He claimed that allied aircraft aimed at an ammunition depot and an army barracks in Surdulica but would not confirm that they hit civilian targets. And he said NATO had no evidence that its planes had fired on journalists.
"I don't have any information at the moment of damage to any civilians or civilian facilities," Shea said in Brussels, omitting his customary disclaimer that NATO regrets any loss of civilian life.