The American organization for Human Rights "Human Rights Watch", 27 years ago, published the report titled "Terror Week in Drenica".
In this report, which was published on February 8, 1999, it is described how Serbian special forces towards the end of September 1998 massacred 21 civilians in Abri e Eperme, and killed 13 men in the nearby village of Golluboc.
Extract from the Human Rights Watch Report - Week of terror in Drenica: Violations of humanitarian laws in Kosovo
Fighting in Abri i Epërme. In mid-July 1998, the Yugoslav army and Serbian police launched a general offensive against the KLA.
It had almost lost control, according to one estimate, over a third of Kosovo's territory. The offensive, which was accompanied by heavy artillery, tanks, and air power, had a major effect in forcing KLA forces to retreat from most of their positions into the mountains and into the trees.
And at the end of this offensive, only a few KLA fighters were killed or captured. The Albanian civilian population, who lived in the war zones, experienced the greatest suffering. More than two hundred villages have been destroyed and at least 300 people have been left homeless. Most of the more than 2000 killed during September are civilians.
The danger to civilians in Kosovo was articulated in a public statement by the International Committee of the Red Cross issued in September: "At the present moment, a grave and unchanging situation reigns for several weeks. Tens of thousands of civilians are in an iron circle of attacks and displaced from their lands. They have been exposed to violence, even threats to their lives, the destruction of their homes, separation from their families and abduction.
Thousands of Sikhs have no place to shelter or seek self-defense..." By mid-September, international pressure on Milosevic to stop this offensive had increased. However, the government had already managed to destroy the centers and locations of the KLA, pushed them towards the mountains. The destructive actions had also remained unfinished in an important area: Drenica, the central part of Kosovo, where the most fighting between the KLA and the government forces had taken place. It was suspected that the final days of the offensive were calculated carefully.
Milosevic and his military leaders knew that they had little time to complete their objective in Kosovo and then manipulate with a request for a rapid withdrawal of forces from Kosovo, as demanded by the West. The village of Abri e Epërme is located in the territory of the Gllogovc municipality of Drenica. The 500-year-old village, which had about 300 houses divided into several large family compounds (neighborhoods), with fields and trees between them, including the Deliu and Hysenaj neighborhoods, which occupy a special place in this report.
Three kilometers to the north, at the top of the coast, is Likoci, which was in the service of the KLA, but since September 13 (1998 - Sh.B) is re-occupied by Yugoslav forces. During September, government forces launched an offensive in the Drenica region aimed at displacing the KLA from this powerful area. The police and army attacked from the direction of Klina, southwest of Glogovac, then from Qyçavica, the mountains to the east and effectively surrounded the KLA forces on the coast of Abria.
According to Naim Maloku, a KLA commander and former Yugoslav army officer interviewed by the New York Times, Yugoslav forces encountered KLA resistance between Abria and Likoci... After the capture of Likoci, the forces and the Serbs were heading towards Abri. According to Zejnije Deliu, who was with her family in Abri, at the beginning of the offensive, government forces began bombarding the Deliu neighborhood from Likoci in the morning, around eight o'clock, on Friday, September 26, with various types of artillery. and mortars. Most of the residents of the neighborhood had taken refuge in the forest to escape the shelling.
The only civilian who remained in the neighborhood during the shelling was Bashkim Deliu, 21 years old, who had to take care of his father Fazliu, 94 years old and invalid. The Union clarifies that the attacks continued again on Saturday morning, after the police returned to Likoc on Friday evening. Half of the convoy of tanks in Likoc, which were about 68 in total, had moved towards the Deliu neighborhood.
They were constantly firing shells from tank cannons into our neighborhood. The infantrymen were following the tanks, and most of them had beards. I was still standing with my father, who needed my help, for water and food. We were smoking a cigarette when the shell hit the roof of the house.
I jumped out of the second floor of the house and ran through the yard. I looked through a hole in the yard door and saw that soldiers and paramilitaries had entered the neighbor's house. I saw the soldiers coming towards my house not more than thirty meters away. They had brown military uniforms and many of them had large knives or small axes, in addition to firearms. I continued to run as hard as I could towards Badërlakëve (the neighboring neighborhood)... For several days, Yugoslav forces would then keep Abrë under control, committing the atrocities mentioned in this report. /KP/
