May 1, 1999
BELGRADE
Bombs Pound Heart and Homes of Serbia's Capital
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By STEVEN ERLANGER
ELGRADE, Yugoslavia -- When NATO bombed residential areas of
Belgrade for the first time early Friday morning, two errant
missiles, meant for military office buildings, hit houses instead.
Dejan Filipovic, 26, was in his upstairs bedroom on Miruliceva
Street when a missile nearly blew him out of the window.
He scrambled out the rest of the way, over the wreckage of the
Zlatni Ovan restaurant, the Golden Goat, breaking only his leg,
said his sister, Alexandra.
"We were in the living room and Dejan was upstairs," Alexandra
said, pulling at the sleeves of her sweatshirt as she shifted
through the rubble. "My mother went through the window and I
followed her, but my father stayed because my brother was upstairs.
When he realized Dejan was alive, he climbed out, too. And then it
all collapsed, and we all thought we were very lucky to be alive."
Branko Filipovic, her uncle, said: "These are crazy people to
do this -- monsters. There's no military building here."
Alexandra, an economics student, laughed harshly. "This is one
of the 'mistakes' of NATO," she said with all the venom she could
muster. "It's just another of those 'mistakes."'
On Thursday in Washington, Gen. Henry Shelton, the chairman of
the Joint Chiefs of Staff, announced that the air war against
Yugoslavia had entered the "domination phase."
Shelton described improving weather and said NATO had planned
670 air sorties through the day and night. "So today's a big
one," he said.
It certainly seemed that way in Belgrade, which had its worst
night of bombing, coupled with a presumably unrelated earthquake
about 5:30 a.m. People joked that "if NATO doesn't get you, an
earthquake will."
After the earthquake, one shaken person interviewed on Studio B
radio said: "Nothing can surprise us now. Only Armageddon,
maybe."
But the deep percussion of high explosives lasted for hours, as
NATO chose targets in the heart of Belgrade -- the massive paired
1970s-era buildings of the Defense Ministry and Army General Staff
Headquarters, just across the street from the elegant Foreign
Ministry, and the federal Interior Ministry, which had seemed to be
pretty effectively destroyed earlier in the war.
Four people died, none of them in the houses that were destroyed
in the Vracar district, near the Kalenic market, one of the city's
largest. At least one police officer died; he had been doing guard
duty by the Interior Ministry, officials said. At least 37 people
were hurt; 13 of them seriously. But officials insisted that the
Defense and Army buildings had been emptied of workers weeks ago.
In the morning, the scene around the buildings was somber and
eerie, as shocked Belgraders picked their way over a carpet of
broken glass and shattered masonry.
Some gathered on the corners to stare, speaking in hushed
voices; others walked along fixedly. Some stopped to pick up a bit
of shrapnel and put it in their pockets. Some diplomats, who had
come to work to find their windows blown in all over their offices,
milled around outside, staring at the shrapnel pockmarks gouged out
of the sculpted stones of the facade.
Workmen with long straw brooms swept the sidewalks and streets,
making little heaps of glistening, broken trash before shoveling
them into trucks to cart away.
The oddest sight was of other city workers carefully pulling the
weeds from the dirt around trees -- some of which had bent or broken
in the blast -- as if a long-ordered city beautification project was
being carried out on schedule amid the ruins.
"What really makes me angry is the Foreign Ministry," said a
passer-by named Ilija. "It's one of the most beautiful buildings
in the city, and it's like the old civic Belgrade is being
destroyed."
The Foreign Ministry, begun in 1903 and finished in 1936, has
lovely arches and windows, with a marble reception area now left
open to the elements. Pretty iron bollards on the sidewalks had
been broken off and elegant street lights bent or severed.
Diplomats had made nervous jokes in recent weeks about being
across the street from such likely targets. The huge defense
buildings, faced with pink stone, were known as Sutjeska, after a
Bosnian mountain where Tito fought a grand battle in 1943 and was
wounded.
But there was something shocking about the home of Yugoslav
diplomacy being shattered in this remote-control war, an irony
immediately seized upon by the ministry spokesman, Nebojsa Vujovic,
who noted that the bombing occurred only hours before the arrival
of the Russian special envoy for the Balkans, Victor Chernomyrdin.
"NATO wants to bury under concrete and steel, under the debris,
not only the civilian victims but the idea of a diplomatic
settlement itself," Vujovic said. "This is an attack on diplomacy
as a method to solve the crisis in Kosovo."
In the Vracar district, an end to the war seemed quite far away.
The history of bombing cities in this century is a mixed one, but
tends to reinforce patriotism and anger, not diminish it.
Branko Filipovic had nothing but imprecations for NATO. "This
will go on until they have the mercy to stop it," he said. "If
the international community does nothing, we won't exist. But we
won't give up Kosovo."
Alexandra said: "I think they cannot know our people and our
life here. We're a small country but educated and proud. We're
proud to live in this city and we're proud to be Serbs and we will
stay proud."
Then she laughed, describing how her uncle often slept in their
house, because he lives so close to the Defense Ministry. "He
slept here for 10 days, thinking it was safer," she said. "And
now they're both destroyed. Only five minutes before our street was
hit, he called us and said everything is smoke and dust."
