Exactly 27 years ago, on April 27, 1999, NATO committed one of the greatest crimes during the aggression against our country in Surdulica.
Targeting this small town, they killed 20 civilians, among them 12 children. In the Milic house alone, they wiped out an entire family, killing Aleksandar (37) with his wife Vesna (37) and their children Miljana (15) and Vladica (12). Along with them, grandmother Stamenka (65), cousin Miomir Milovanovic (17), a female neighbor, and two men who were installing an antenna on the roof also perished.
On that day, the media reported on Surdulica as the Serbian Hiroshima. The targets of as many as 10 NATO missiles were exclusively civilian targets, a densely populated area called Cubrine Livade as well as the Piskavica settlement. The house of the host Vojislav Milic, who worked abroad, turned into a killing ground. In the three-story residential building of the Milic family, a large aerial bomb pierced the roof and the slabs of three floors… Grandfather Vojislav was not in the house.
“My close relatives perished… I was 14 years old then, but the memories do not fade. On the contrary, I am more aware of how great that suffering was. Rarely were they all in the house, except for that terrible day; only grandfather Vojislav went to pick nettles and thus was the only one left of the entire family. Only he knows how it was for him after the death of his loved ones… He has also passed away in the meantime,” David Milic (39) tells “Novosti,” adding that neighbor Stojanca Pavlovic was in the adjacent room and survived, and his testimony about the suffering in the Milic house is recorded in the White Book on NATO crimes.
On that terrible day, the Malobabic family, neighbors of the Milics and refugees from Krajina, was also extinguished: seventeen-year-old Milenko and his brother Rade, as well as their parents.
“I was a young doctor, not even 30 years old. I remember that we didn’t know when we were working. There was a duty shift, but according to an unwritten rule, whenever the sirens were heard, we all came to work. My father was a doctor and the deputy director of the hospital. Mutely, in silence every morning, we went to work with the desire to help our neighbors, friends, and relatives,” Dr. Aleksandra Popovic says with a trembling voice.
She says she cannot forget the dark days of the bombing of Surdulica from April 21 to May 31, when a total of 50 civilians died. Especially April 27:
In the NATO aggression against our country, Surdulica itself was bombed three times (April 21 and 27 and May 31), and the surrounding area more than 10 times. 50 civilians were killed, and 204 were injured. As many as a quarter of the residential buildings in the city were destroyed or damaged. Data indicates that Surdulica had the most civilian victims during the aggression in relation to the total number of inhabitants. In the third attack, on May 31, the Sanatorium for Lung Diseases, the Gerontology Center, and a pavilion with refugees were hit. In an instant that night, 20 people were killed and 95 were wounded.
“That day we walked through a city that was not ours; everything was destroyed. We will always remember the fear in the eyes of the survivors and the wailing of those whose closest ones perished.”
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Source: Novosti, Photo: Tanjug