from srebrenica doctoring in hell srebrenica s doctor recounts town s living hell by laura pitter tuzla bosnia reuter neret mujanovic was a pathologist when he trekked through the mountains to the besieged muslim town of srebrenica last august but after treating mangled victims of bosnia s bloody war he considers himself a surgeon now i m a surgeon with great experience although i have no license to practice but if i operate on a person and he lives normally that s the greatest license a surgeon could have evacuated by the u n this week to his home town of tuzla the muslim physician gave an eyewitness medical assessment of the horrors of the year long serb siege of srebrenica and the suffering of the thousands trapped there i lived through hell together with the people of srebrenica all those who lived through this are the greatest heroes that humanity can produce he told reporters mujanovic had practiced for two months as an assistant at a local hospital in tuzla but before going to srebrenica he had never performed a surgical operation on his own now he says he has performed major surgery times relying on books for guidance amputating arms and legs times usually without anesthetic delivering babies and performing four cesarean sections he worked to hour days slept in the hospital for the first weeks after his arrival last aug and treated patients he arrived after making the trek over mountains on foot from tuzla miles northwest of srebrenica about other people carried in supplies and soldiers guided and protected him through guerrilla terrain he said his worst memory was of days ago when seven serb shells landed within one minute in an area half the size of a football field killing people immediately and wounding half of the dead were women and children the people had come out for a rare day of sunshine and the children were playing soccer there was no warning the blood flowed like a river in the street he said there were pieces of women all around and you could not piece them together one woman holding her two children in her hands was lying with them on the ground dead they had no heads before mujanovic arrived with his supplies conditions were deplorable he said many deaths could have been prevented had the hospital had surgical tools facilities and medicine the six general practitioners who had been operating before he arrived had even less surgical experience than he did they didn t know the basic principles for amputating limbs once he arrived the situation improved he said but by mid september he had run out of supplies bandages were washed and boiled five times sometimes they were falling apart in my hands he said doctors had no anesthetic and could not give patients alcohol to numb the pain because it increased bleeding people were completely conscious during amputations and stomach operations he said blood transfusions were impossible because they had no facilities to test blood types i felt destroyed psychologically mujanovic said the situation improved after dec when a convoy arrived from the belgian medical group medecins sans frontieres but mujanovic said the military predicament worsened in mid december after bosnian serbs began a major offensive in the region every day we had air strikes and shellings then the hunger set in between mid december and mid march when u s planes began air dropping food between and people were dying every day from complications associated with malnutrition he said i know for sure that the air drop operation saved the people from massive death by hunger and starvation he said according to mujanovic around people died in srebrenica of them children during a year of siege mujanovic plans to return to srebrenica in three weeks after visiting his wife who is ill in tuzla they say i m a hero he said there were thousands of people standing at the sides of the road crying and waving when i left and i cried too sharon machlis gartenberg framingham ma usa e mail sharon world std com
