NATO targets Yugoslav refugees- agency
Melbourne ( South News) 30 March: AT least nine and possibly up to 15 refugees
had been killed in Yugoslavia because of NATO air strikes, Care Yugoslavia
said today.
Care Yugoslavia spokesman Steve Pratt told Australian ABC radio that Care
field staff had confirmed nine people died when NATO targeted buildings
nearby to where their refugee centres had been cited.
Another six were believed to have been killed when targets near four other
centres were hit but these deaths had not been confirmed.
"I suspect the centres had been located very close to military targets. The
report that I am getting is that they have probably been caught up in some
sort of collateral thing," Mr Pratt said.
The refugees killed were believed to include women and children who were
ethnic Serb refugees who fled Bosnia during the 1995 conflict.
Mr Pratt said the nine people confirmed killed had been housed in two
Serbian centres which were part of a network of centres housing Bosnian,
Croatian and Serbian refugees.
"They were not directly hit, they don't seem to have been deliberately
targetted. But they were in within 100 or perhaps 200 metres of other
military targets that had been hit and these centres were close enough to
suffer severe damage and to create fatalities."
He said the centre where eight refugees were confirmed killed had been
located 60km southwest of the city of Nis in an old army barracks consisting
of barracks of wooden huts.
But two of the nine buildings had been damaged, including one which was
burned down, when NATA hit a warehouse about 100 metres away.
"I believe (the damage) was accidental," Mr Pratt said.
"The target, as my field staff are reporting it to me ...was quite a well
known military complex, it was a VJ or if you like a Yugoslav army
warehousing system...and clearly that was what NATO were going for and
indeed the majority of the damage, the impact point, was certainly in that
complex."
Another refugee had been confirmed killed in Kosovo's capital of Pristina in
a refugee centre close to police headquarters.
"Again this was a refugee centre too close to a NATO target. I suppose this
is the way things are in war but it is extremely sad," he said.
"We do think there are up to another six refugees killed in four other
damage centres which we are still unable to confirm."
Mr Pratt said the refugee crisis was now catastrophic.
"The last 24 hours has been quite dramatic."
CARE field staff confirmed tens of thousands of refugees were moving into
Montenegro while up to 100,000 people were moving into Albania.
"And Macedonia must now have reached the point where it cannot take any
more refugees because of its own general ethnic balance and so what we
are seeing here now is a catastrophic movement of people in all directions.
We are talking about 100,000 in two or three days."
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