Besieged

The Bosnian Muslims had been under siege for almost three months, trapped on the East side of Mostar between the Croats and the Serbs. Sally, who had been ferrying aid to West Mostar, was granted permission to evacuate the wounded children from the besieged hospital. On 27th August 1993, she set off across the front line in an ambulance loaned to her by the Croat Health Authorities.

(Excerpt from Sunflowers and Snipers-by Sally Becker), Sunflowers and Snipers will be published by The History Press August 2012.

26 August 1993; this was as far as the police escort would go and I stared anxiously across the disused airfield that crossed No Man's Land. Having previously been confined to driving on the west side of Mostar, the route was unfamiliar to me and I was alarmed when Paul announced that he had never been this way before either. One of the policemen scrawled the directions on a scrap of paper but he could not guarantee its accuracy; he had not been beyond this point since hostilities began.

I carried spare clothing and a torch in case we should be forced to remain in the area like the UN convoy. The rear of the vehicle was filled with antibiotics, dressings and some medical equipment. I had also bought coffee, cigarettes and cheese for the hospital staff – items that were impossible to obtain on the besieged side of the city. According to Ivan, the ceasefire would last until 1 pm the following day. There remained, however, the question of snipers positioned within a four-mile radius around the city. The thought that some of these maverick marksmen might not have heard of the arrangement did little for my confidence.

I drove as fast as I could across the deserted runway. It was late afternoon and the air was still hot and humid, so I slid back the door. We were the only thing moving for miles and I knew that we were within sight and gunsight of both sides. I cringed at the thought of how many eyes might be watching us but hoped that an ambulance would not be targeted by snipers. As we passed the main road that leads to Sarajevo I wondered what it must have been like before the war, when the road was teeming with traffic.

The area was eerily quiet apart from the distant thump of shells and the road was empty except for the mines, whose deadly spikes protruded from the tarmac. Steering carefully around them, I followed the directions drawn on the crude map and drove towards the first checkpoint, where three soldiers stood watching us approach. They were dressed in shabby uniforms displaying the insignia of the Bosnian army and wore sneakers instead of boots; each of them carried a rifle.

'It seems they weren't expecting you,' said Paul.

Reaching beneath my seat I handed the soldiers a carton of cigarettes, which immediately brought a smile to their faces.

'Ask them how we get to the hospital' I said to Paul.

Without waiting for a translation one of the men pointed towards some buildings in the distance.

'Follow the road,' he said in English. I glanced across at Paul.

'Toto, we're not in Kansas anymore.' He was clearly not amused.

Passing through a village on the outskirts of the city, people began to appear on the roadside asking for food. We stopped to hand out some packages but were immediately surrounded and I decided we had better press on.

The road soon narrowed onto a track filled with potholes and as we drove towards the divided city I caught a glimpse of our destination. Nestling at the foot of the mountains, small, quaint houses with terracotta roofs and moss-covered grey stone walls led down to the River Neretva. The city looked relatively peaceful beneath the setting sun, with only the odd puff of smoke in the distance to remind us of the war. Mostar had once been regarded as one of the jewels of central Europe and was a favourite haunt of tourists who would pay the local children to dive off the old sixteenth-century bridge. Originally commissioned by Suleiman the Magnificent, construction began in 1557 and took nine years. The architect, Mimar Hayruddin was ordered (under pain of death) to construct a bridge of such unprecedented dimensions that he is supposed to have prepared for his own funeral on the day the scaffolding was finally removed from the finished structure. Upon its completion it was the widest man-made arch in the world and certain associated technical issues remain a mystery: how the scaffolding was erected, how the stone was transported from one bank to the other, how the scaffolding remained sound during the long building period. As a result, the bridge is considered one of the greatest architectural works of its time.

Suddenly a shot was fired across the roof of the ambulance and when I realised what it was, I wondered what had happened to the promise of a ceasefire.

'Sniper!' shouted Paul as he dived into the back and buried himself beneath a pile of boxes. I slid down in my seat while trying to slide the door closed and change gear, all at the same time.

'This is a nightmare!' I cried, 'I don't know what to do!'

'Just keep driving,' he shouted, 'we need to reach the cover of the buildings.'

'Thanks for the tip,' I called, unable to see where I was going, 'you just stay there nice and safe; back-seat bloody driver.'

I desperately tried to stem the panic that threatened to engulf me but my heart seemed to be somewhere in my throat and I debated leaping from the vehicle and running for my life. Instead, I jammed the accelerator to the floor and with the engine roaring in protest, I weaved the lumbering vehicle to and fro, hoping to confuse the snipers.

The shots came one after the other and I was convinced that we would both be killed. I was sure that the gunman would not be shooting if he knew we had come to help the children. I had never stared death in the face before and it was the most terrifying experience of my life.

I kept my head down most of the way, only popping up when absolutely necessary to see where I was going. My heart thumped loudly in my chest, the sound reverberating in my ears and in the background I could hear Paul's muffled voice issuing instructions. It must have taken about ten or fifteen minutes to reach the cover of the buildings but each of those minutes felt like an hour.

I am often asked whether I get a 'buzz' from such experiences and the answer is no – not for a moment. I was filled with dread, believing that my life was about to end on that dusty road. The fear never left me and in fact it got worse.

As we approached the main street I saw that the way ahead was blocked by an overturned vehicle. This was Marshal Tito Street, which runs the full length of the city. Behind the makeshift barrier stood the nineteen ODA trucks that brought in the first consignment of aid to reach the city since the siege had begun. Alongside them were the UNPROFOR armoured vehicles, there to protect the truck drivers, the representatives of the aid organisations and members of the press. The position of the convoy was precarious, constantly exposed to the threat of shelling or sniper fire and some of the soldiers looked worried; having already lost half a dozen members of their battalion since their deployment in Bosnia.

I parked the ambulance and climbed out, my hands and legs shaking from the tension of the journey. Paul announced that he was going to visit some friends, so I locked the vehicle, as once again I was surrounded by desperate looking people. They were quite thin but did not seem to be starving as we had feared, though the children were pale and sickly.

UN soldiers with their heavy flak jackets and steel blue helmets stared in surprise as I strolled passed them dressed in my white T-shirt and jeans. Albert and Leo appeared and to my surprise Albert clapped me on the back.

'I knew you would come,' he said smiling. Unable to think of a suitable response I ignored him and turned to confront Leo.

'You assured me that everything had been arranged, meanwhile we were almost killed!'

He looked a little shamefaced. 'Sorry but I couldn't tell them you were coming because I wasn't able to leave my APC.'

'Well, what about Droce Azem, the child in need of surgery?' I asked.

'I'm afraid he died about three weeks ago.'

Of course I was shocked and saddened by the news, as well as a little confused – but I had been granted permission to evacuate all the children in need of medical treatment so I decided to get moving.

A Spanish officer accompanied me back to my vehicle and offered to drive me to Higijenski where the wounded were being treated. The walls of the makeshift hospital were painted red, pockmarked by shrapnel and bullets and the windows blocked with sandbags and wood. The building had suffered constant shelling and artillery fire and part of the upper floor was missing. I had to use a torch to negotiate my way down the stairs and as soon as I entered the basement I became aware of a terrible smell; sweet and cloying and overwhelming, the stench of blood and putrefaction. I had never smelt anything like it before but I knew that it was the smell of death.

The floor was slippery with blood that squelched beneath my feet as I picked my way along the dimly lit corridor. The building had once been a public health laboratory in a thriving city but was now a makeshift hospital in a devastated war zone. Around me there was a frenzy of movement and noise as doctors and nurses, their eyes red and their faces slack with exhaustion, struggled to deal with the constant flow of sick and wounded. Patients were lined up on stretchers, trolleys and tables, anything that could be pressed into service as they awaited emergency surgery. Drip lines dangled from hat stands and some of the patients were moaning or crying out in pain; while others lay still with frightening resignation. It was a production line in hell.

A reporter approached me from ITN and told me she had permission to film me with the evacuees.

'It's a wonderful story,' she enthused. 'A UN convoy trapped in a war zone and you come in to rescue the children.'

Following her into a small room, I was met by a sight that would forever haunt me. This was the children's ward, crowded with the innocent victims of a conflict beyond their comprehension. They had been wounded by shrapnel or sniper fire, mines or rocket-propelled grenades, either in their own homes or whilst running a desperate errand for their families. The oldest was sixteen, the youngest a toddler.

Lying in one of the beds was Selma Handzar, the ten-year-old girl I had seen on TV. Her face was burned and pitted with shrapnel and beside her on the blood-stained pillow was a yellow teddy bear with a large pink nose. Next to her was Mirza, her brother, who was also wounded; an enormous bandage swelling his right leg. Their mother had tears streaming down her face as she spoke to me.

'My Selma was so beautiful. Why her?'

'The doctors will make her beautiful again,' I said.

I sat down carefully beside the little girl. 'I've come to take you away from here, to somewhere safe and quiet. There will be no more bullets, no more shelling, just a peaceful place where doctors can make you well again.'

The nurse translated my words and Selma smiled. She then threw back the sheet to reveal a small stump where her right arm used to be. The horror must have shown on my face for she tried to reassure me.

'Don't worry,' she said, 'it's nothing.' A nurse explained that when the children were brought into the hospital there was only enough anaesthetic for one operation and Selma insisted that her brother should have it. Her arm was then amputated with only the teddy to bite on for relief from the pain.

I recalled all the times I had moaned about a toothache, headache or some other trivial complaint and was filled shame. I realised that for her, this tragedy was part of her normal life; she had seen friends suffer similar trauma and probably worse. To me, this was a living nightmare but for her it had become an everyday reality. Her brother called out, 'Kiki-riki,' and a nurse translated.

'He's asking for peanuts, they are his favourite.'

'Tell him he'll have peanuts, chocolate and anything else he wants,' I said, fighting back the tears.

Nermina Omeragić, who was just thirteen, had been preparing medical supplies for distribution to the wounded in Mostar when she was hit by mortar shrapnel. Her lower right leg was shattered and several inches of the tibia destroyed. The wound was badly infected and she would need extensive treatment if she was to survive.

A sixteen-year-old girl called Maja Kazazić was lying on a bed close by. She had been wounded several weeks earlier when a mortar exploded outside her apartment, killing five of her friends. Due to the heat and lack of antibiotics, she had developed infections in both of her legs and one of them had to be amputated. Her father, who had also been wounded, was sitting beside her. He told his daughter what was happening and explained that she would be leaving with her aunt.

The doctors were grateful for the supplies we had brought, even the simplest items were scarce. Prior to this latest convoy there had only been one delivery of humanitarian aid and that had been 67 days ago; even the 200 tonnes brought in by the ODA would only relieve the situation for a very short time. Word of my arrival spread quickly and upon my return to the main street, Albert Benabou drew me to one side: 'We are trying to arrange the release of the convoy in return for the evacuation of the children.' Still shaken by the scenes at the hospital, I rounded on him.

'When I requested UN assistance for this mission no one wanted to know, yet now that you're in trouble you're prepared to use me to get you out !'

'Don't you understand!' he said, beginning to get angry. 'We are all in danger here. There has been a great deal of shelling and there is no food or water. The locals are desperate and could turn on us at any time. Your evacuation may be the only chance we have of getting out.' He then tried another tack.

'In any case it would be impossible to take all the children and their mothers in your own vehicle but we can lend you an ambulance. We also have helicopters on standby in Medjugorje to fly the patients to the field hospital in Zagreb.'

I thought for a moment. He was right about the lack of space in my ambulance and in any case it was too dark to move the patients now. If we had to leave without the protection of the convoy, it would certainly be better to wait until daylight.

'Ok,' I said finally, 'Go ahead and negotiate but we will have to leave tomorrow morning regardless.'

I went to sit in the ambulance and was joined by Brent Sadler and his camerawoman. They had entered Mostar by trekking through the mountains from Sarajevo, carrying their equipment on the back of a donkey. Brent stretched out on the floor, oblivious to the thuds and bangs around us, not even waking when a shell exploded in the car park.

Taking my torch I returned to the basement where the doctors sat talking and smoking their precious cigarettes. Hafid Konjihoddzic, a neurosurgeon, was a slightly built man in his forties, serious and sad with intense dark eyes and a nervous manner. He had come to work as usual one night and became trapped when the Croats began their offensive against the East side. He and his colleague, Jovan Rajkov, a Serb, were averaging twenty to thirty operations per day in the appalling conditions. They often worked stripped to the waist because there were only two sets of surgical clothes between the two teams.

Many of the patients had come from West Mostar, evicted from their homes by the Croats and forced across the front line at gunpoint, putting extra strain on the scant resources. The city lay in ruins and of the seventeen mosques only two remained standing. There was no running water or electricity and people were using their furniture for fuel to cook and boil water. The front lines were no more than ten metres apart in some places, so the enemy was half a street away. Fortunately, the houses were built very close together so those brave enough to venture out would use each other's kitchens and living rooms as cut-through routes to avoid the snipers.

Hafid's wife, who was still living in West Mostar, was pregnant with their first child. Being a Muslim, she was in danger and he was desperately worried. She also had endometriosis, hazardous in childbirth when it can cause complications such as abscess or rupture. He asked me to deliver a letter to her. Some of the other doctors wanted me to do the same for them. When the letters had been written, they put the names and addresses inside the envelopes in case they should be discovered. One doctor asked me to phone his brother in Germany and tell him that his wife had been killed. Most of the journalists who were trapped with the convoy were hoping to follow me out; many had urgent stories to file, others were simply afraid. I convinced the doctors to let them leave so they could highlight the situation in Mostar.

The Spanish officer joined me at the entrance to the hospital and offered me a cigarette. We talked against the background hum of the oil-fired generator, the building's only source of power. He told me that the doctors had insisted they were not able to release the UN convoy without permission from the Bosnian army.

'My ceasefire ends at lunchtime,' I said, ' so I can wait until mid-morning to give you more time but then we really must leave.'

As dawn broke, Jeremy Bowen sent a report to the BBC's Today programme.

'There has been an amazing turn of events' he announced. 'Sally Becker, an independent aid worker from Britain, has entered East Mostar to rescue wounded children and the UN is planning to use the evacuation to come out on her tail.'

At 11.00am the second ambulance drew up outside the hospital. There was still no sign of movement from the convoy so we began to bring the children up the stairs. As they were lifted into the vehicles, Selma's mother wept as she kissed her husband goodbye.

Suddenly a car screeched into the compound. There was no glass in the windows, the bodywork was scarred with bullet holes and a crude red cross was daubed on the side. I watched in horror as two little boys aged three and five were carried from the back of the vehicle. Their small bodies were covered in blood and they writhed and screamed in agony. Behind them their mother was led from the car in a state of shock. She was carrying a new-born baby girl with shrapnel wounds to her legs and face.

The scenes in the basement were bad enough, but the sight of those small bodies with their appalling injuries was even worse. A doctor grabbed my arm and asked me to help them. He told me that the older boy had a serious injury to his head while the younger child had shrapnel in his eyes and damage to his kidneys. He told me that they would need to be stabilised before they could be moved but he hoped I would come back in two or three days to get them and I promised that I would.

'Of course,' I said, knowing that I might regret it.

Outside the hospital the young father was leaning against the vehicle with his head in his hands. To see a child in pain is hard for any parent but he had three injured children, two of them with horrifying wounds. We tried to make the patients as comfortable as possible in the back of my ambulance while Brent Sadler and his camerawoman squeezed into the passenger seat beside me. Paul turned up just as we were leaving and he climbed in the back.

I pulled out of the hospital compound and waited on the main street for the other vehicle to join us. Five, ten minutes ticked by and still there was no sign of them. Brent offered to find out what was happening and we waited with the sun beating down on the roof. The intense heat was causing the children to moan in discomfort but I had brought some water along and handed it around. At last Brent reappeared with Albert and Leo.

'We cannot allow you to leave without the convoy,' said Albert, as I climbed out of the vehicle.

'What do they intend to do' I asked,' Hold us hostage?'

It seemed incredible that the United Nations should consider delaying the evacuation of seriously injured children as a means of breaking their own deadlock. I was outraged and told him so.

'You have to have co-ordination,' he insisted.

Just as the second vehicle pulled up behind us, Albert reappeared. He said that it might now be needed by the UN soldiers so we would either have to carry all the patients inside my ambulance, or return some of them to the hospital. I couldn't decide which was worse; to endanger the children by crowding them together or to tell them that they couldn't leave at all. He alarmed me still further when he announced that the UN helicopters would no longer be waiting to transport the patients to Zagreb: they had been cancelled.

My head was spinning. The ambulances were parked in the blazing heat filled with wounded children and the ceasefire would end in 40 minutes. I couldn't believe that United Nations personnel were prepared to endanger lives in this way. The local people were equally desperate, knowing that as soon as the UN convoy left the area, they would be bombarded with rockets and shells. They wanted the UN to establish a permanent presence in Mostar and this was the only way they believed they could get it. My own mission was a separate issue, I had entered the city alone and it was clear that the army would not release the convoy in return for the lives of five children. Fifty-five thousand people were trapped in East Mostar, all of whom would be at risk from the moment the UN departed, the shelling and sniper fire providing a never-ending staccato accompaniment to relentless hunger and deprivation.

Cedric Thornberry appeared with Colonel Morales and as I got back behind the wheel I was accosted by the UNPROFOR commander. He demanded that I hand over the keys to the ambulance and I tried to explain that it did not belong to the UN but was in fact on loan from the hospital in West Mostar. He ignored me and started shouting as he tried to drag me from my seat. The children looked frightened and I told Paul to reassure them, though I felt far from reassured myself.

As I left the vehicle prepared for a confrontation with Thornberry, the TV cameras began closing in. Before I could say anything, Albert took me aside.

'It's ok, you can take the other vehicle after all. There has been a misunderstanding.'

I received no explanation for the sudden change of plan but at that moment I didn't care. As we made our way through the ruined streets followed by some press vehicles, a man appeared, hobbling along on crutches in front of my vehicle. It was Selma's father, Mirsad Handzar, on point, determined to ensure that nothing else would impede our departure.