>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.
>[...]
>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.