Besarta Hamza's thrilling account at 11 years of age, a week after her family was slaughtered

Now 31-year-old Besarta Jashari, 10 days after the attack, had confessed the launch of Serbian attacks that claimed her family members' lives. After the bombing ended, Serbian soldiers had entered the Jasharaite house to make sure they had all been killed. Besarta was pretending to be dead. But one of the Serbian soldiers found out she was pretending, after she put her hand in her chest, where she felt her heartbeat. Once assured that she was alive, she had been sent to the Serbian military base over their house. For three hours, she had been interrogated about her father, Hamza, and Uncle Adam to be thrown into the street.

Periscope brings you The complete article of reporter Marie Colvin published in the “The Sunday Times” on March 15, 1998. Colvin as a war reporter was killed in 2012, Syria. In addition to Kosovo and Syria, she had reported from other countries facing war such as Chechnya, Zimbabwe, Libya, East Timor, Sierra Leone and Sri Lanka, where she had lost one eye.

The following article is published in the newspaper “Koha Ditore”, on March 15, 1998. Periscop secured it from the archives and brought it full: 

Eleven-year-old Besarta Jashari remembers when the bombing of her home was stopped. For hours, the noise was unbearable. While she was nested under the table where her mother cooked bread, the ceiling collapsed and the walls seemed to explode. Now calm was bothering you. Drung by smoke and dust, she called the mother.

While she was dragged through the rubble, crying, she found her sisters, 10 years old Nina, Fatimen 8 and Brian seven. He tried to wake up, until he realized they were dead, he was covered with blood.

Then Bessarta saw her brothers, 20-year-old Selvetin, Safetin, 17, Besimi 14 and Brian 12. They always looked strong. Now, everyone was dead. Finally, she saw the mother, Feriden, bright black hair, and the sweet voice of which, Besarta, held in her heart ʹ spread, with limbs scattered at different ends. She would never answer the call her daughter made.

The grenade break was shown to be too short. Besarta would spend the night and the next day, lonely with her dead family around her, while Serb bombs were jumping again, hitting the red - red white building that had once been her home.

Smart and happy student Besserta is the only one who has survived the attack, which now cannot be called anything but a thought - and - out massacre.

The house in Prekaz, the village of pastorial relief, the carefully worked fields and hills that could easily be changed with those of Somerset, has housed 22 members of the families of the two brothers, Hamza Jashari, Besarta's father and Adem Jashar, her uncle ethnic Albanians in Kosovo.

Their deaths were not a war accident. I combined the pieces of horror last week from the testimony of Bessanta é, who is now hiding in a family in the vicinity of Scytheright, which she confessed to relatives who managed to escape from other homes in Prescas. I've seen the empty holes on the rooftops and walls of three Jasharaites' houses one of Besart's grandparents, and one for Hamza and Ademi and the dark stains left on the wall by gun shooting.

In the mud yard were the signs of home life - a torn sports bag of the young boy, a postcard from relatives in Germany, and a satellite antenna coveted by bullets. The parts of the missiles were seen scattered in ruins.

It is almost certain that the Yasar brothers have been linked to the Kosovo Liberation Army (UÇK), the militant force that emerged during last November and devoted to the war for the purposes of ethnic Albanians, which constituted 90 percent of Kosovo's population.

They lost patience with the passive course of politics of the Democratic League of Kosovo. The link stands behind passive resistance against Slobodan Milosevic's violent tactic, the nationalist Serbian president of Yugoslavia, who has removed the province's autonomous status and excluded Albanians from all state affairs.

However, this was not the murder of terrorism suspects or the well of dangerous persons outside the law. It was an unannounced military attack on the homes of three families: On men, women, and children sleeping on their beds.

Serbs bombed the Jasaret property until the moment they thought everyone was dead. In military formation, they've only entered to secure themselves.

Perhaps they were fed up with murder when they found Bessarath. Perhaps they thought it was too young to be accused. Or perhaps they could not see a girl terrified and kill her. But that is why truth can be known.

Yesterday, all that moved on the Jasharaites ' property were two cows and some chickens that were hauling through the rubble. On the other side of the dusty road that passed by the Jasharan property were 51 cool, black - covered tombs on which the planks were placed. These were the last resorts of 22 The Jasharaites who died at home, four cousins killed in the vicinity and neighbors who took to the streets Serb forces.

Operation on Kosovo ʹ the attack on the Drenica Valleys, the region of placid villages, which is the hotbed of Albanian resistance, began on February 28th, a day after four Serb police officers were killed in a well while attending KLA guerrillas. Serbs first attacked the village of Likoshan, killing 24 Albanians. Then they prepared to attack Prekaz, where Jashart were the main family.

Jetish Durmish, the bus driver was warned of danger when a friend called from his home near the Mitrovica Police station, telling him that a convoy of buses loaded with Serbian police were headed towards Presca.

Durmish fled to the mountain, leaving his family behind, in the past Serbs have targeted only men. The mountainman saw what happened on the Jasharan property.

“Brenda a few minutes, police came and the village was surrounded by the Serb cordon”, Durmish said.

They stood a few meters apart along the entire road up to” shores.

Fire opened from the Serbian base at 0600 in the morning. There was no warning. The first to be killed were Agat, members of the Roma family, who panicked and tried to abandon their home. The mother, little boy, and daughter were executed in their garden. The next victim was Nazmi Jasharaj, owner of a kiosk in Prekaz, who sold cigarettes and other items, who lived on the other side of the main family's property.

He tried to carry his elderly mother, Nailen, from the back door and was killed in front of her. The signal was clear. Anyone observed leaving the house would be hit by Serb snipers.

Yashaw had no escape. They were going out, facing shooting. If they were inside, they would be bombarded. The last thing that Beserta remembers in her family was that her uncle, Adam, while the bombing continued, sang Albanian folk songs to encourage others. He often sang at local weddings. The vast Yasharaj family gathered in the room they thought would be safer, but grenades were thrown to the roof, then to the walls.

Besarta remembers the moment when her uncle stopped singing. Then, 26 hours later, she only remembers the sound of bombs. She said that before the Serbian police entered the house, they marched through it, opening fire by machine guns. They threw grenades into each room ahead of them.

I heard them come into our room”, she told her uncle Hilmi. I tried to pretend I was dead, but one of the soldiers put his hand on my chest and felt I was alive”.

Still dressed in her red shirt and black trousers, now covered with blood, she was forced to step on the bodies of her family members to leave the house surrounded by Serbs. She was sent to the military base over her house and interrogated for three hours.

They asked me about my father and Uncle Adam”, she said. I told him nothing. Serbs threw her off a street in Mitrovica, and she ran to the home of a classmate. She was still there last night, traumatized, shocked and had trouble talking. Besarta did not know that the remains of mother, father, uncle, aunt and her cousins were listed by police at a construction facility in Skenderaj.

When none of the family came to identify them and their friends insisted that they be given postmortem examination, Serbs threw them into graves that they had opened in front of their home waste, in semi-discovered coffins.

Survivors returned during the night to do the work with honor. All that remained of Besarta's family was a pile of black bags in the storage of the building material, each with a number attached to the bags, each filled with bloody clothes that they wore when they died.. /Periscopi