The twelfth anniversary of the attack on the Nis Express bus near Podujevo

Posted on February 16, 2013 by Editor One comment

It has been exactly 12 years since the terrorist attack on the “Nis-Express” bus at Livadice, near Podujevo in Kosovo and Metohija. Ten Serbs died and forty passengers were either seriously or lightly wounded in this attack. Not long afterwrds two more Serbs succumbed to their wounds.

On February 16, 2001 a bus with Serb pilgrims was heading from the Kosovo boundary with central Serbia towards Gracanica together with several other vehicles, escorted by KFOR peacekeepers.

The pilgrims were about to take part in commemoration services on central Kosovo graveyards. The bus was blown up powerful explosives which were placed in a sewage pipe under the road and activated from a safe distance

. The part of Kosovo where the attack occured is exclusively inhabited by Kosovo Albanian population.

After the attack British soldiers found a wire 600 meters long by which approximately 100 kg of TNT were detonated exactly at the moment when the Nis-Express bus was passing along the road.

Sodiers from the Ukrainian contingent of KFOR detected six more explosive devices on the roads which were leading to the southern Serbian enclave of Brezovica.

One of the main suspects for the attack, Kosovo Albanian Florim Ejupi, managed to escape from the well secured KFOR military camp at the US Camp Bondsteel. Ejupi was arrested again in 2004 in Tirana but neither him nor other three Kosovo Albanians which are also suspected of murder of a member of Kosovo police in 2004 have been sentenced for the attack on the Serbian bus.

The attack on “Nis Express” bus near podujevo was one of the most tragic examples of post-war terror in Kosovo. According to all comments and analyses the goal of the attack was to intimidate the remaining Serb poulation. Regrettably, attacks against Kosovo Serbs did not stop after this attack. The perpetrators of most of ethnically motivated attacks in Kosovo after the war and the arrival of the UN mission have not been brought to justice.

THE LIST OF KILLED PASSANGERS ON THE “NIS-EXPRESS”

The following 10 Serbs got killed, and all of them – with the exception of the two drivers – are from Kosovo and Metohija:

1.STOJANOVIĆ NENAD (born on July 7, 1943) from Nis, driver of the bus NIS-Ekspres.
2.KRAGOVIĆ MILINKO (born on January 5, 1943) from Nis, assistant driver-bus conductor.
3.LAZAR MILIKIĆ (born on June 19, 1936) from Lipljan.
4.DRAGAN VUKOTIĆ (born on November 2, 1954) from Kosovo Polje, refugee in Nis.
5.NEBOJSA-NJEGOS COKIĆ (born on June 27, 1974), from Sadovina near Vitina, lived in Priątina, refugee in Kurąumlija; husband and father of the following victims respectively:
6.SNEZANA COKIĆ, maiden name Zdravković (born on February 16, 1975), from Lipljan, Njegoą’s wife
7.DANILO COKIĆ (born in 1999), child 2 years old, of father Nebojąa-Njegoą and mother Snezana.
8.MIRJANA DRAGOVIĆ (born on January 12, 1981), a girl from Laplje Selo, her sister got hurt.
9.SUNČICA PEJČIĆ (born on January 14, 1972) from Priątina, refugee in Nis.
10.TIHOMIR STOJKOVIĆ (born on January 18, 1969) from Kosovska Kamenica. He is the tenth victim that got killed on the spot, his corpse was heavily burned and could not have been identified.

11.®IVANA-ZORANA TOKIĆ (born on May 5, 1948) from Skulanovo near Priątina, refugee in Leskovac; died 10 days after the accident due to serious wounds inflicted in the explosion, on February 16, 2001; buried in Leskovac.
12.N. TOKIĆ – husband of ®ivana Tokić, died as well (end of spring 2001) due to the wounds inflicted to him in the bus near Livadice.