1999: Chronology of Violence (March 20 – June 9) March 24, 1999

Đakovica / Gjakovë

A surgeon at the “Isa Grezda” hospital lived with his family in the Stara Čaršija neighborhood. Around midnight, two policemen entered their house. About ten more policemen were in the yard. One told the children to go out into the street. Their mother followed them. She heard gunshots from inside the house. The next day, she returned home with a relative and found her husband dead. With the help of the hospital director, they buried him at the city cemetery. Before the end of the war, Serbian forces exhumed bodies from 87 graves at the city cemetery, including the surgeon’s remains, and transferred them to mass graves in Batajnica. His remains were returned to Kosovo in November 2005. An autopsy conducted at the Institute of Forensic Medicine in Orahovac/Rahovec determined that “gunshot wounds to the head, body, and left forearm” were the cause of death.

 

Glogovac / Gllogoc

Before the start of the bombing, women and children left the village of Gradice/Gradicë and took shelter in the mosque in the village of Ćirez/Qirez. The men stayed in the forest near the village, from where the older ones came to feed the livestock. It was before noon when several relatives, including a 65-year-old former worker at the Belaćevac mine until 1990, came to the Fazliu neighborhood to feed the livestock. He was in the yard when he was fatally struck by a projectile fired from the direction of the village of Godance/Godancë, where Serbian forces were stationed.

 

Istok / Istoq

Around noon, two brothers left a teahouse in the village of Ljubožda/Lubozhdë, got into a car, and as they were about to leave, two policemen arrived and ordered them to get out and open the trunk. The brothers complied, and one of the policemen then shot and killed one of them. The other brother seized the policeman’s rifle and shot the policeman who had killed his brother. The second policeman immediately opened fire and killed the second brother. A third brother, who had witnessed the incident from the teahouse, came out, seized the policeman’s rifle, and killed him with it.

 

News quickly spread in the village that two policemen had been killed. Two boys went to see what had happened. As they approached, they heard the noise of a tank and saw Serbian soldiers, so they ran away. One boy hid in a stream. He did not see where his friend went. No one ever saw him again. His fate remains unknown.

 

Klina / Klinë

From March 24 onward, no one from the Lekaj family, who had left Cerovik/Cerovikë in the summer of 1998, knew what had happened to four of their relatives who had remained in the village. Only after the war, at the end of June 1999, did villagers, relatives, and two sons of the victims who had come from Germany find the bodies in two graves in the Ali Kurtaj neighborhood, at a place called Malishte—son and daughter in one grave, and the parents in another. An autopsy determined that they had been killed by firearms.

 

A railway worker was taken from his home at around 3 p.m. by four men in military uniforms. His wife recognized a Serb neighbor and a Roma relative who lived nearby. His body was found in June by neighbor Rifat Morina, who was searching for his own father’s body, covered with garbage in the Prline/Perlinë neighborhood.

 

Kačanik / Kaçanik

In the morning of March 24, the village of Kotlina/Kotlinë was shelled, after which units of the VJ and MUP entered the village, gathered the residents, and separated men from women and children. Women, children, and elderly men were taken by truck to Kačanik/Kaçanik, where they were held until the following day. A group of men was taken out of the village to a slope above it, where two wells were located, and 22 were killed by firearms. Their bodies were thrown into the two wells, after which explosives were thrown in and earth was placed over the bodies. After the army and police withdrew, villagers who had been hiding returned to the village and found three people who had been killed, and buried them in the mosque.
Exhumation and examination of the remains were carried out by an Austrian forensic team from September 13 to 16, 1999. Gunshot wounds were identified in a large number of victims, as well as injuries caused by explosions and burning.

 

Kosovo Polje / Fushë Kosovë

Around noon, a retired factory worker from Kumanovo, who had moved to Kosovo Polje in 1981 with 13 family members, took a television by taxi, in a white Mercedes, for repair to the village of Bresje. On the way back, near the police station, the taxi was stopped by the police. According to people who were nearby that day, the police searched them, killed the taxi driver, and took the retiree inside, where he died as a result of mistreatment. The policemen placed their bodies in the trunk of the white Mercedes. While doing so, they grabbed an Albanian passerby and forced him into the car. Their bodies were found the next day near the village of Nakarade.

 

An Albanian from Bresje who worked in Germany last spoke on March 24 with his mother, brothers, and sister-in-law, who lived in an apartment building in Bresje. They told him that many paramilitaries were present in their building. In the following days, they no longer answered the phone. After the war, his daughter returned from Germany and learned that six Albanians had been buried at a place called Varrezat e maxhupve (“Gypsy cemetery”). The remains of her mother, brothers, and sister-in-law were exhumed there. She identified them based on clothing, a watch belonging to one brother, and documents belonging to another brother and his wife.

 

On the day the bombing began, a 78-year-old retired miner remained alone in his apartment on the fourth floor of a residential building in Bresje. His three sons had fled. When they returned at the end of June, they found the apartment ransacked and their father missing. A Roma neighbor told them that the police had taken him from the building. His fate remains unknown.

 

According to police records, a 23-year-old demobilized reservist was killed in Bresje due to improper handling of a rifle grenade.

 

The family of an 86-year-old Albanian—his son, daughter-in-law, and grandchildren—left Kosovo Polje/Fushë Kosovë on the day the bombing began. He refused to leave his house on Kosovski junaci Street. After the war, his son learned from a Serb neighbor, Siniša Denić, that his father had been killed. He was taken to the village of Nakarade/Nakaradë to a cemetery where 45 Albanians killed by Serbian forces had been buried. He was shown the grave, but found only his father’s blanket and plastic gloves inside. Five years later, the son received his father’s identified remains, exhumed from a mass grave in Batajnica. He states that the autopsy report indicated 21 gunshot wounds.

 

Mališevo / Malishevë

Residents of the village of Pločica/Pllaqicë, including four brothers with their families from the Gashi neighborhood, fled the village for the second time two days before the start of NATO bombing. This time they went to the village of Golubovac/Golluboc. The wife of one of them was transported in a handcart. On March 24, her husband set out back toward their home. No one could stop him. His fate has remained unknown since.

 

Mitrovica / Mitrovicë

The president of the Democratic League branch in Kosovska Mitrovica/Mitrovicë, who had been a full professor at the University of Priština until 1991, was killed on the first day of the bombing in his family home at 35 Anke Spajića Street. At around 11:00 p.m., the household was awakened by the sound of the front door opening. Four armed men in camouflage uniforms and wearing balaclavas entered the house. The professor begged them not to harm his grandson because he was ill; they then seized him, took him outside in his pajamas, and shot him in the head on the path in front of the house.

 

A hospital maintenance worker disappeared on the day the bombing began. His mother had died on March 21, and in accordance with Turkish customs, he spent three days in front of the building at 17/6 Vlade Ćetkovića Street receiving condolences. At one point on March 24, his father went outside to ask him something, but his son was gone. His fate remained unknown until September 2010, when the family received his identified remains, which had been found in September 2003 in the village of Vaganica/Vaganicë.

 

A policeman of Albanian nationality, who had served in Pećka Banja and stopped working in spring 1998, moved with his family to the village of Svinjare/Frashëri. The VJ barracks were bombed on March 24, after which his family left the village, while he remained with other men. His partially buried remains were found after the war in a meadow in the village of Pirče/Pirq. He had three gunshot wounds to the chest.

 

Podujevo / Podujevë

In the village of Dobri Do/Dobërdol, two brothers, both farmers, were having coffee in the afternoon when their house was surrounded by a group of five or six Albanians. One of the attackers shot one brother in the hallway—whose son was a police officer in the Podujevo police station—and killed him on the spot. The other brother fled to the attic and, after the attackers left, escaped the village. Three to four days later, the family came to bury the victim and found three of their houses burned and, in one of them, a burned chest.

 

A member of the 152nd “Shaban Shala” Brigade, assistant commander, was killed in the village of Dobri Do/Dobërdol.

 

The commander of the OVK position “Te tabet Llapashtices” was killed in the village of Donja Lapaštica/Llapashticë e Ulët in a clash with Serbian police.

 

Prizren / Prizren

At around 11 a.m., police entered the village of Koriša/Korishë and ordered the residents to leave. Two brothers decided not to leave their home. One remained with his wife and daughter-in-law. Both were killed by firearms. The women were robbed. After the police left the village, residents returned, and a neighbor found their bodies at the village dumping site.

 

Suva Reka / Suharekë

In a clash with Serbian forces in the village of Samodraža/Samodrazhë, four members of the OVK were killed.

 

Uroševac / Ferizaj

On the day the bombing began, at around 8 a.m., a large group of police and soldiers entered the village of Lać/Laq and gathered the residents in the center of the village. A group of 40 men, including a pensioner with his two sons, was taken by truck to the SUP in Uroševac. They were beaten throughout the night and released in the morning. The pensioner, aged 71, suffered severe pelvic injuries and was unable to walk. He died in exile in Tetovo. The death report stated that the cause of death was injuries to the pelvic bones.

 

A retired worker of the “Uljarica” factory lived near the technical school. When the first air raid sirens sounded, he escorted his daughter-in-law and grandson to a shelter—the basement of the technical school—and then returned home to get food. On his way back, at around 9 p.m., while crossing the street, an unknown person shot him. He died on the way to the hospital. Several neighbors were nearby, but nothing happened to them.

 

Vučitrn / Vushtrri

Following the announcement of the bombing, residents of the village of Okraštica/Akrashticë left the village. A 73-year-old woman remained behind. A villager who was hiding in the forest, about 300 meters away, saw two women at the exit of the village, a vehicle that stopped, and policemen beating one of them, then shooting her. The other woman, who was farther away, fled after about 10 minutes. After nightfall, he found the woman—he knew her—and covered her body with a blanket. Two days later, he learned that her granddaughter had been with her, having come to take her out of the village.