Greek doctors tell of horror in Pristina hospital 
04:39 p.m Apr 10, 1999 Eastern 
By Anatoly Verbin 

SKOPJE, April 10 (Reuters) - Two Greek surgeons who spent the last 10 days
in a hospital in the Kosovo capital Pristina said on Saturday they operated
with no electricity, running water or adequate medicine. 

``When we went in, it was a scene out of World War Two,'' said Lakis
Papaioannou, a doctor from Thessaloniki, northern Greece. ``When we left,
it was a scene out of St John's Apocalypse.'' 

The two, who work with Greek aid organisation Doctors of the World, said
they had been the only foreign doctors in Pristina. They operated on 50
patients and helped treat another 400. 

``Most of them were civilians and children and most were ethnic Albanians
and Turks,'' Papaioannou, visibly exhausted, said after arriving in Skopje,
the capital of neighbouring Macedonia. 

He said some of the patients had been shot by snipers or had been wounded
in battles between Serbian forces and ethnic Albanian guerrillas. 

Others were victims of NATO's bombing campaign aimed at persuading Yugoslav
President Slobodan Milosevic to accept a peace plan for the southern
Serbian province of Kosovo, he said. 

The doctors showed some video footage of their operations but said some
injuries, including babies who had been badly burned, were too horrific to
be made public. 

When they arrived in Pristina, they found the hospital short of the most
basic drugs and had to operate on their first patient -- an ethnic Albanian
with a bullet wound in his head -- using local anaesthesia. 

The two said they ventured out of the hospital only twice for security
reasons and on their first outing they say a ``ghost town.'' They saw more
people in the streets, including ethnic Albanians, before they left
Pristina earlier on Saturday. 

After NATO attacked central Pristina overnight on Tuesday, the doctors
operated on three people injured in the bombing -- an ethnic Serb, an
ethnic Albanian and an ethnic Turk. 

NATO admitted that one of three bombs aimed at the town's main telephone
exchange hit a neighbouring residential area by mistake. 

The doctors said they operated with candles and torches, using ordinary
thread for stitches. 

``We left when we ran out of materials completely,'' said Papaioannou. The
second doctor said their organisation was planning to send another mission
to Kosovo and appealed to the world community to donate money and medicines. 

``Even if you do not send humanitarian aid, our appeal is simple -- stop
the war,'' Papaioannou said.