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)
The makeshift hospital was built of red brick, its walls pockmarked by shrapnel and bullets and the windows blocked with sandbags and wood. The building had undergone a barrage of constant shelling and artillery fire so many of the patients were housed in the basement. It was dusk by the time we arrived and I had to use my torch to negotiate my way down the stairs. I became aware of a terrible smell as soon as I entered; sweet and cloying and overwhelming, the stench of blood and putrefaction. I had never smelled anything like it before but I knew that it was the smell of death.
The floor was slippery with blood, which squelched beneath my feet as I picked my way through the dim light of the basement. The building had once been a public health centre 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 against seemingly impossible odds. Patients lined the corridor on stretchers, trolleys and tables, anything that could be pressed into service as they awaited emergency surgery. Drip lines dangled from hat stands beside them and many moaned or screamed in pain while others lay still with frightening resignation. It looked like a production line in hell.
A British reporter approached me from Independent Television News 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 through an archway into a makeshift ward, I was stunned by a sight that would forever haunt me. This was the children's ward, crowded with the innocent victims of a conflict not of their making and 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 many beds was the child I had seen on TV. She was ten years old and her name was Selma Handzar. Her face was swollen and distorted, pitted with shrapnel. Beside her on the blood stained pillow was a yellow teddy bear with a large pink nose. In the next bed was Mirza, her younger brother who was also wounded when a shell exploded in their back yard. A large bandage dwarfed his right leg. Their mother was standing beside them and she looked at me with tears streaming down her face.
Someone translated. 'My Selma was so beautiful', she cried, 'Why her?'
“The doctors will make her beautiful again”, I said, trying to reassure her.
I sat down carefully beside the little girl. 'I've come to take you away from here, to somewhere safe and quiet,' I said softly. 'They'll 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 the stump of what had once been her right arm. 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 had insisted that her brother have it. Her arm was 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 with admiration for this brave little soul who tried to make light of her appalling injuries in order to make me feel better. I realised that for her, this tragedy was part of her normal life; she had seen friends suffer similar traumas 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 Omeragic, who was thirteen, had been preparing medical supplies for distribution to the wounded in Mostar when she was hit by mortar shell fragments. 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 a few weeks earlier when a mortar exploded outside her apartment. Due to the heat and lack of antibiotics, she developed infections in both of her legs and one of them had to be amputated. The nurse explained that unless she received treatment soon, she would die. Her father, who had also been wounded, was sitting beside her. When he heard what was happening, he explained to his daughter, telling her she would be leaving with me and her aunt.
The doctors seemed grateful for the supplies I had brought for even the simplest things were scarce. Prior to this latest convoy there had only been one delivery of humanitarian aid and that had been sixty seven days ago; even the two hundred tonnes which had just been 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' he declared.
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 angrily, '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 of here.'
He then tried another tack. 'We can lend you another ambulance. You cannot take all the children and their mothers in your own vehicle. We also have helicopters on standby in Medjugorje to fly the patients to the field hospital in Zagreb.'
I thought for a moment. It was too dark to move the patients now so his negotiations wouldn't make any difference to our departure. 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 have to leave tomorrow morning.'
He and Leo went into the hospital, hoping to convince the doctors that my evacuation was part of the UN mission. I went to sit in the ambulance and was joined by Brent Sadler and his camera woman. They had entered Mostar by trekking through the mountains, 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. I was introduced to Hafid Konjihoddzic, a neurosurgeon. Hafid was a slightly built man in his forties, serious and sad with intense dark eyes and a nervous manner. He told me that he and his colleagues averaged twenty operations per day in the appalling conditions. He had just removed a bullet from a young boy's brain by torchlight. There was no normal oxygen supply; instead they relied upon the industrial variety and amputations were performed where in other circumstances the limbs might have been saved. He told me that they were forced to play God, keeping back vital medicines for those who might have a chance.
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. The front lines were no more than ten meters apart in some places so the enemy was literally 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. . There was no running water or electricity and people were forced to use their furniture for fuel to cook and boil water.
Hafid's wife, who was still living in West Mostar, was pregnant with their first child and he was deeply concerned for her safety. Being a Muslim, she was in danger and he was desperately worried. She suffered from endometriosis which could prove hazardous in childbirth. He asked me to deliver a letter to her, and 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.
Some 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. They convinced the doctors to let them go, insisting they would highlight the situation in Mostar. A UN officer joined me as I stood in the hospital entrance and we talked against the background hum of the oil fired generator, the building's only source of power.
'Have the doctors agreed to release the convoy?' I asked.
He shook his head. 'They say we must convince the Bosnian commanders.'
'My ceasefire ends at lunchtime, so I can wait until eleven to give you more time but then we really must leave.'
As dawn broke, Jeremy Bowen sent a report to the BBC's Today program.
'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 eleven o'clock 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 we lifted them into the vehicles, Selma's mother wept as she said goodbye to her husband.
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 newborn baby girl with shrapnel wounds to her legs and face.
What I had seen in the basement was awful, but the sight of those small bodies with their appalling injuries was even worse. As soon as the way was clear I ran into the hospital to ask what I could do to help. The doctor told me that if they survived, he would need two or three days to stabilise them before they could be moved. 'Will you come back to get them?' he asked, 'It might be their only chance. The oldest child has serious wounds to his stomach and we don't have the antibiotics to combat infection. The younger boy has shrapnel in his eyes and without an operation he will probably lose his sight.
'Of course I'll come back 'I said, knowing I would have to keep my word.
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 for the second ambulance 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.
'The UN will not 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.
All of a sudden I was accosted by the commander of the Spanish battalion. He demanded that I hand over the keys to my vehicle and I tried to explain that the ambulance 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. One of the children cried out in fear and the women looked frightened. I told Paul to reassure them though I felt far from reassured myself.
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 in one vehicle, or return 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 the previous night.
My head was spinning. The ambulances were parked in the blazing heat filled with wounded children and the ceasefire would end in forty 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 UN protection and this was the only way they believed they could get it. My own mission was a separate issue for 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. There were fifty thousand people trapped in east Mostar, all of whom would be at risk from the moment the UN departed.
Cedric Thornberry came striding towards us and the TV cameras began closing in. I was prepared for a confrontation but before I could say anything Albert took me aside.
'It's ok,' he said '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. I was just grateful to be leaving. As we made our way through the ruined streets followed by the press, a man appeared, hobbling along on crutches in front of my vehicle. It was Selma's father, Mirzad Handzar, determined to ensure that nothing else would impede our departure.