(8/31/98)
SENIK, Serbia, Aug 31 (Reuters) - Long strands of a woman's dark brown hair lifted in the breeze on Monday, anchored to a piece of scalp stuck to a shoe on a hill near Senik in Kosovo, where Serbian forces attacked refugees last week.
An abandoned pair of children's knitted booties lay trampled in the mud near lumps of human brain.
Trees swayed over fire-scorched bags of peppers, rain-soaked mattresses and tangled spools of sewing thread left behind by panicked victims who escaped the onslaught, which began last Thursday.
At the foot of the hill a jumble of burned-out tractors, wagons and automobiles were all that remained of dozens of vehicles destroyed when Serbian infantry, having driven the refugees away, swept through the area.
The Serbians used hand grenades and cans of benzene to burn anything of value in the open air camp that once housed hundreds of ethnic Albanians displaced by fighting in Kosovo.
So intense was the heat from the firestorm of vehicles that pieces of molten metal fused together during the carnage lay scattered on the ground.
UN spokesman Fernandon del Mundo, who arrived on the scene just hours after it had been torched last Friday, described the aftermath of the attack as ``something from Dante's inferno.''
Fatima Ramaj, 48, had two members of her family killed and four others wounded in the initial attack late on Thursday afternoon. She described what she remembers:
``I was on top of the hill with my family and the (mortar) bombs started falling and I saw my grandson lying on the ground without a head,'' the woman recalled.
``We could see Serb soldiers on the hill across from us and we dived under a tractor to escape, but the tractor was being hit by bullets and shrapnel.''
Accounts given by survivors, diplomatic observers and aid workers indicate that 17 people died as a result of the Serbian assaults on Thursday and Friday and that at least 47 people were wounded.
Thirteen of those wounded, all ethnic Albanian women and children, are being treated in hospital in Pristina, capital of the southern Serbian province of Kosovo.
Another 34 are lying in houses in Senik, a village about 30 km (18 miles) southwest of Pristina. Reuters interviewed four of the wounded there, including two brothers, aged seven and 13, whose mother and sister were killed in the initial attack.
``We were near the top of the hill and the shells started exploding. Our luck was to survive but my mother and sister died there,'' said 13-year old Blerim, as he wept while lying on the floor with brother Kustrin. Both boys suffered head wounds.
Senik was already crowded with ethnic Albanian refugees driven from other villages in Kosovo when Serbian armoured vehicles assembled on an airstrip used to service a nearby vineyard on Wednesday, August 26th.
Fearing the sort of attack that has left scores of other places in Kosovo smouldering, residents and refugees alike withdrew about a kilometre to an area where several narrow gullies come together.
There they set up an outdoor camp, cutting tree branches to create shelters along the steep hillsides.
``We knew that they (Serbian forces) might shell and then come into the village to loot and burn, but we thought we would be safe in the forest and that they wouldn't attack civilians,'' said 44-year old Jakup Zulfaj, a survivor from Senik.
But Serbian forces took up positions on the ridges above the open-air camp as well and began mortaring the area on Thursday afternoon, forcing the refugees to flee back into Senik or further into the forest.
The next day, Friday, Serbian infantry came down the hills on foot and destroyed the rest of the camp.
Six graves lie in the woods above the burned-out vehicles. Those dead were buried on Friday afternoon with UN officials present after calling Belgrade to ask that Serbian forces not fire on the funerals.
The request was honoured, but UN officials said they could see Serbian soldiers standing on the ridgeline looking down at them as the burials took place.
Senik is still intact despite some damage from bullets and shrapnel, but it and neighbouring villages are gorged with refugees waiting uneasily for what they fear is an inevitable attack by Serbian troops.
``How can they (Serbian forces) not return here?'' asked 50-year old Ragip Zekolli, a local ethnic Albanian political leader and refugee from the nearby town of Suya Reka.
``We think they will come again, but our back is against the hills and there's no escape. The weather has been bad and it's been raining so it would be hard to get away. Better to die here in these houses than out in the forest.''
Kosovo has a population of 1.8 million people, about 90 percent of whom are ethnic Albanians. A decade of harsh direct rule by Belgrade has left most of the ethnic majority yearning for independence.
An armed ethnic Albanian insurgent force known as the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) gained substantial ground through the spring and early summer this year but is now reeling from a month-long Serbian counter-offensive.
Zekolli added, ``When the Serbs strike, when the bombs sting, and I'm feeling sad, I just remember my favorite things, and then I don't feel so bad.''