Anniversary of the Tragedy of Marija and Nikola Petrovic: No Place for Forgetting

On this day in 1999, on the Luzane bridge near Podujevo, a sister and brother, Marija and Nikola Petrovic from Gracanica, along with their grandmother Smiljana, were killed by a NATO missile while traveling on the “Nis-express” bus. A memorial service was held at the cemetery in Gracanica, and family and friends at the monument declared that there is no place for forgetting.

Marija was only 14 years old on May 1, 1999, while Nikola was two years older. Twenty-five years after the tragic event, their parents still struggle with grief and pain.

Nikolina and Marijina's mother, Zorica, recalls that day as if it were yesterday.

"God has prolonged our lives, given us a bit of health, a bit of strength, to live for them. Although we have no more strength, we've used it all up, but still, we must live to visit them, to light candles for them," said Zorica Petrovic, expressing gratitude to their school friends for erecting a memorial plaque. The hardest days for her, she says, are from May 1 to May 7, the period when the incident occurred.

"Those are difficult days, they pass heavily. Day by day. I don't sleep, I think about how it was, how it could have happened, why it happened to us. Everyone mourns their own. Every heart aches for its own. When I heard it, my life was shortened," said Petrovic.

Father Dragiša Petrovic says the suffering continues daily throughout these 25 years.

"That's what they did to us, what should we call them, villains, murderers, occupiers. They have inflicted pain on us, the children are not to blame. None of the civilian victims were to blame, but fate was such, that's what happened to them. I wasn't home for five or six days, I knew nothing, but I had a premonition, something was pressing on me and I kept asking if that bus had left Niš. There was no one to tell me. They told me nothing until I got home. When I saw the street full of people, then I sensed something. I had an old 'Fiat', I thought maybe my son had an accident, but when I heard what had happened, I collapsed, I didn't know anything about myself anymore. We have to live for them, as long as we are alive, to visit them, because after our death, there will be no one," said Petrovic.

He emphasizes that he has been waiting for justice all these years but no longer believes he will see it.

At the site of the tragedy, under the bridge in Luzane, Kosovo authorities have placed a memorial plaque with the names of the Albanian victims, while the names of the Serbs are marked with three dots.

"Just three dots, and their (Albanian) names. They say that 13 more Serbs should have been listed, but they weren't, what can we do. It's in their hands and there's nothing we can do about it," said Dragiša Petrovic.

Marija's and Nikola's friends initiated the installation of a memorial plaque in the yard of the "King Milutin" primary school in Gracanica in 2022, and Marija’s school friend Miodrag Zivic said today that friends and families will never forget them.

"Twenty-five years have passed and we still ask 'why', why did that 'Merciful Angel' who said it would only target military objectives, but still hit a civilian bus. What hurts us even more, the father just said, is that on that bridge there are no names of theirs, neither theirs nor their grandmother's. Just some three dots. We are here as a generation, to be there for them, to help them, to remember them if nothing else, on this day and to not forget, it is really hard without them. As long as we can, as long as the parents can, as long as this generation lives, we will remember them," said Zivic.

On that May 1st, 1999, when a NATO plane's missile struck the bus passing over the bridge in Luzane on the Pristina-Podujevo route, 44 people perished.