Under attack – the hospital doctor blind to ethnicity

17 December 1992: Robert Fisk reveals the plight of Stolac, a village that fell victim to war

Bosnia 1992, Sarajevo (AFP via Getty)

Stolac was a pretty little village. The walls of its old Turkish fortress still glower over the broken mosque. A clutter of looted boutiques stand beside a stream which chuckles down to the Neretva.

A few days ago, just along the road, they unceremoniously exchanged the bodies of a few fighters, the Croats booting a cluster of Serb bones into a plastic sack to taunt the Serbs – who contemptuously kicked a severed Croat head into a bodybag.

The Serbs shell the local hospital. The Croats claim it no longer exists, a final lie intended to seal the fate of Stolac. So much for the 120 people inside, Muslims and Serbs and Croats, patients and staff, the very last bit of old Yugoslavia left in the valley of the Neretva.