NATO bombers hit town `full of people'

Father Milevoj Ceric's headless body lay on the mortuary slab just hours after he said Mass. His black shoes were polished and his pale blue shirt was still neatly tucked into the trousers of the black suit he had worn to celebrate his villagers' feast day.

Father Milevoj's parishioners said he was about 50 years old, but it was impossible to know what he looked like because his head - blown off in the NATO air raid - was not found. The man lying next to him on the slab had his guts torn out by the explosion, and his waxy, white arms were thrown back over his head as if in panic or in horror.

A handsome young man was one of eight bodies laid out in the morgue, someone had put his legs beside him on the stretcher.

NATO aircraft dropped their first bomb on the rusty old bridge across the Morava River at 12.53 p.m. They came back 14 minutes later - as townspeople including Father Milevoj, rushed out to help the victims of the first explosion - and dropped two more bombs.

"Ten people were killed. We don't know how many more have found graves in the waters of the Morava", said Mr Dragan Cavnic, the mayor of this pretty town of 5,000. Forty people were still missing. Vavarin is famous for its rose wine and vegetables. "Everybody knows today is a religious holiday here. This has been our market day for centuries. People from surrounding villages gather. They bombed as people were leaving."

The NATO spokesman, Mr Jamie Shea, said: "Our policy hasn't changed. Everything we attack is a military target. Just because there wasn't a tank on the bridge, doesn't mean it wasn't a military target."

But the bridge was too narrow for a tank to cross. Villagers said the two NATO aircraft flew low. They believe that NATO planned to kill the maximum number of people.

Mr Dragolub Scanojevic, the principal of a local school, said: "If they had bombed the bridge at night, I could believe it was a military target, but on a Sunday when it was full of people?"