Sifting through the rhetorical rubble is occupation in itself

Nenad Benzadic is 26 years old, and the father of two children. He has not told me this information

Nenad Benzadic is 26 years old, and the father of two children. He has not told me this information. It is written on the white card that hangs from the end of his hospital bed.

Nenad, his face a blistered purple mass, cannot speak at the moment, but doctors say he will be able to speak in the future. He will not, however, be able to see. His eyes have been blown apart by a missile that last week hit the factory where he worked.

We are in a hospital in Gnji lane, 40 km south-east of Pristina, where in recent weeks Albanian refugees have poured in from neighbouring mountain villages. It is a bustling town, functioning despite an absence of electricity. Streets are filled with shoppers and Albanians in carts pulled by donkeys are a common sight.

In the NATO attack that injured Nenad, five people were killed and 19 injured. The target was a factory called Binacka Morava, a building and construction company set in a large industrial park. NATO says it was a military target. Serb officials say it was nothing more than a local civilian factory.

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First-hand observation suggests that neither side is telling the whole truth, but half-truths and slanted propaganda seem to be the essence of every tale here. Sifting through the rhetorical rubble is an occupation in itself.

This industrial complex has been the target of seven separate NATO attacks. Also hit, just adjacent to the construction company, was a repair company for buses called Kosmetpebob. When I visit both sites, there are the collapsed roofs, burned cars and buses, twisted metal and concrete rubble that is now familiar to anyone in Kosovo.

There is the danger of "seen one bomb site seen them all" syndrome. Dried blood stains the wheel of one car. A worker points to a pile of debris and says his co-worker's hand is still beneath it. They managed to pull the man out, but they couldn't find his hand.

Jovica Simonovic, his head bandaged and cotton in his ears, says he was standing in the driveway when they saw the missile heading towards them. "I just dropped down, lay on the ground," he said. The bomb landed some 30 feet away, and Mr Simonovic was hit with shrapnel, but his injuries are not serious.

The attack came at 10.30 in the morning, and many workers were taking a coffee break. At a nearby employee cafe, three women sat around a table having breakfast when the first missile hit. One immediately telephoned her children to say she was OK. Minutes later a second missile hit. All three women, ages 50, 31 and 25, were killed.

The mayor of Gnjilane says that the construction factory employed 3,000 people. It has nothing to do with the military, it is a purely civilian operation. Later, he explains that only 1,800 people work there now because of the war.

At the time of the NATO attack, only 50 people were at the factory. This seems strange to me. Why were only 50 employees in a huge company that employs 1,800 people? The rest were working off-site, he explains. This also seems peculiar. Odd that 1,750 construction workers were in the field; Yugoslavia is not, at the moment, in the midst of a construction boom.

In the rubble of the car and bus repair site, there are the remains of a truck with red tarpaulin covering the rear. I lift the tarpaulin and find piles of tyres and sticks, the kinds of sticks that I have seen serving as road barriers all around Kosovo. Tyres are set aflame in many areas to fool the laser-guided bombs. Both items, ordinary objects, are part of this war.

What is a military target and what is not is of little concern to the doctors and nurses at the hospital in Gnjilane. They are too busy trying to save Nened Benzadic's sight. With 480 beds, some 40 km from the capital of Pristina, they are at the front line of this war, and they are overwhelmed.

The hallways are stark and depressing, old yellow paint peeling from the walls. In Nened's room there are three other patients from the missile attack, all in considerably better condition, although all are pock-marked with shrapnel injuries.

Despite the severity of Nened's injuries, he is being treated with a single intravenous line containing hydrating fluids. He has a mound of makeshift bandages over his eyes. He appears to be in pain and is moaning softly.

There is not a single other piece of medical equipment in the room. No beeping heart monitors, no blood gas measurements, nothing of the sleek chrome gadgetry that is familiar in better Western hospitals. There is also, of course, no electricity in this room. The hospital has a generator, but is trying to reserve it for emergency operations and dialysis patients.

"In the beginning we decided to send more critical patients elsewhere, where there are more facilities," said a bearded man named Dr Jovanic, "but now we can't. There are no bridges and not enough petrol. We can't even get to people in the night, or move them anywhere."

The 100 Serb doctors and 200 nurses here are angry, too, because they say that about 100 Albanian doctors used to work here and just didn't show up for work when the war started. Again, I wonder about those numbers. So, before the war, you had 200 doctors in a 480-bed hospital, a better than 1:3 doctor-patient ratio? I ask, isn't that awfully high, unusual for such a strapped facility?

There is no answer. Just a repetition that the 100 Albanian doctors just didn't show up for work one day, leaving them overwhelmed and overworked.

Similarly, there will be no acknowledgement from these doctors that the hospital is filled with injured Yugoslavian soldiers. It is the policy of the Yugoslav government not to discuss casualties. When I ask how they are treating bombs and gunshots wounds, they will only say they are treating those civilians wounded from NATO bombs.

As I am whisked from Nened's room, I pass four or five rooms, filled with four beds, each containing young men. In the hospital parking lot, soldiers come and go, appearing to be visiting patients inside.

One can only wonder about the point of such inept attempts at secrecy and concealment. What has happened in Kosovo, what is happening in Kosovo, what has been done by and to both Albanians and Serbs, is unfolding every day, and will, in the end, be obvious to anyone willing to look.

Helen Kinghan adds from Brussels: There will be no cease-fire, NATO insisted in Brussels yesterday, because there is no sign of Serbian withdrawal. Rather than pulling back, Serb forces have pushed the conflict over the border into Albania, NATO claimed.

NATO further intensified its air bombardment yesterday, reaching a new record number of 650 sorties against strategic targets in Serbia and ground forces in Kosovo. The attacks are now continuous, 24 hours each day.