>On top of that NATO is sprinkling Kosovo with cluster
>bombs, which will be blowing the legs off Serb and Albanian civilians
>alike for the next decade.
Story in today's NYT conceded a lot along these lines.
Doug
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New York Times - May 6, 1999
Doctor Sees Warfare Etched in Flesh By STEVEN ERLANGER
RISTINA, Yugoslavia -- Dr. Rade Grbic, an orthopedic surgeon who directs Kosovo's largest hospital, has become a reluctant expert in bomb blasts.
He admits with some mordancy that it's a rather specialized field. But after Kosovo's low-intensity warfare between the Yugoslav authorities and the Kosovo Liberation Army, which generally involved the more mundane intricacies of gunshot wounds, NATO's air war has provided new opportunities for study.
Bomb and missile blasts of the ordinary kind, like the one that split a passenger bus in two just north of Pristina, over a bridge at Luzane, are bad enough. "There are a lot of burns and the effect of the blast, which produces a lot of open fractures, perforated eardrums and blood clotting from internal injuries," Grbic said.
"But it's the cluster bombs that are the worst problem," he said, describing the effects of anti-personnel weapons that spread shrapnel over a wide area. "They cause extreme trauma in the survivors, many with severe wounds in the arms and legs, and in some cases, amputations."
Sometimes the bomblets don't explode, "leaving a problem for the future," Grbic said. He described a group of kids tending cattle in the village of Doganovic, near Brezovica, who tried to open a bomblet with a knife. The explosion killed five of them and wounded seven others.
Unlike its pre-war days, when its 2,400 beds were 90 percent full, the hospital, The Clinical Center at Pristina, is only 60 percent full now. One reason, Grbic said, is the enormous exodus of refugees who have fled or been pushed from Kosovo, which has reduced the patient pool.
But with little gasoline available and the fact of daytime bombing, the number of chronic patients coming to the hospital for treatment is also much reduced. Before the war, there were 3,700 employees, roughly half Serbian and half Albanian, with some 700 medical experts, 70 of them MDs. But despite Kosovo's horrors and the exodus of hundreds of thousands of ethnic Albanians, about 80 percent of the staff members have remained, and nearly all of the doctors. But some nurses with children have left, and most of the male Serb staff have sent their own families out of Kosovo -- including Grbic, who is a Serb.
"Hospital workers are different, and feel a special moral and ethnic responsibility," he said. Some Albanian workers have left, while others came with their families to the hospital for refuge. Some Serb families came, too, he said, "under the reasonable theory that the hospital will be the last place to be bombed."
At 39, Grbic said proudly, he is the youngest hospital director in Yugoslavia. In general, this hospital, Yugoslavia's second largest, is doing well, having prepared for war. Stocks of medicines and sanitary bandages have been supplemented by Greek aid through Doctors of the World, and there are four generators and stocks of diesel in case NATO cuts off electricity again in Kosovo.
A three-truck convoy with more Greek aid from Doctors of the World was nearly attacked Wednesday afternoon coming to Pristina from Skopje, the Macedonian capital, when NATO planes swooped low, said Dr. Lakis Nikolaou, a Greek neurosurgeon who brought the convoy to the hospital. A bomb or missile landed about 150 yards away and the convoy nearly went off the road, he said, shaken. He conceded that the pilot may have seen the red crosses on the trucks at the last minute and diverted his munitions.
Since the air campaign began on March 24, this hospital has treated 420 civilians wounded in NATO bombings, 300 of whom have required surgery. Between 15 percent and 20 percent are children, and about 60 percent are Albanian. The hospital also treats wounded soldiers for life-threatening medical emergencies, Grbic said unprompted, but after treatment they are transferred as soon as feasible to military hospitals in Belgrade and Nis.
"It is a sensitive area, and we want to have the designation of a civilian hospital," he said. He also volunteered that the army was not stockpiling any munitions or fuel in the hospital or on its grounds. Men in uniform were visible in the hospital, but not in large numbers, especially given the number of uniformed pedestrians throughout Pristina.
Grbic would not reveal the number of military casualties treated here, but said they were fewer than the number of civilian casualties, "especially in the last three weeks, as NATO has moved into the phase of bombing moving targets," like convoys.
This hospital gets most of Kosovo's casualties from NATO's accidents of war. The totals include the 15 survivors of the Luzane bus bomb (one person in intensive care died on Tuesday, bringing the death toll to 41) and others, like most of the Vojvode family, ethnic Albanians from Srbica who were injured when a bomb fell near their house 20 days ago.
Murat Vojvode, 37, died, and five children were injured, all of whom were admitted here. His wife, Shehrije, was fine, having been chatting over at a neighbor's. Their son, Shefqet, 10, remains in intensive care with a perforated colon and a colostomy, and the other children fill one room at the hospital.
Mentor, 13, groaned steadily, coming out of anesthesia after treatment for a deep shrapnel wound in one leg and open fractures just below both knees. His mother tried to comfort him and hush him in turns, while trying to describe what had happened.
Bexhet, 5, cried for his mother's attention and a cracker, while the other children, Albert and 1-year-old Jeridona, lay still or slept.
"The planes were very low, and I saw them drop a bomb in the street," Mrs. Vojvode said. "And then I heard the screaming from my house."
After 20 days, the family is much improved, but unclear about where to go. Mrs. Vojvode, who was wearing a pink sweatshirt marked "Hugo Boss," thinks they will return to Srbica to live in her sister-in-law's house. "We don't have any money," she said. "We have food from the hospital, and we hope there will be some humanitarian aid."
Grbic presented the Vojvodes as an example of cluster-bomb wounds. The Behluli family, some of the luckiest aboard the Luzane bus because they were traveling at the very back, were recovering from burns.
Xhevahire Behluli, 30, was badly burned on the face and body and broke both of his legs. Three children were with him, and only Albulena, a pixieish 12-year-old in her newly shorn hair, was hurt very much, with her arm in a sling from hand wounds and bruises.
Another little girl, badly burned on the face and body, her leg fractured and her hair cropped short, lay moaning softly in her bed. She knows her name is Majlinda, her mother is Fatima and her father Ejup; she appears to be 2 years old; she was on the bus with her mother and brother but has not yet said her brother's name.
The doctors think her mother and brother are dead. "She'll be fine, but we don't know anything more about her," Grbic said, upset. "She's alone and no one has come to find her."