Vaughan Smith, founder of London’s Frontline Club, a venue that supports freelance journalists around the world, told BIRN Kosovo’s TV show Kallxo Pernime on Monday evening how he filmed Serbian police besieging the home compound of Kosovo Liberation Army co-founder Adem Jashari in March 1998.

The assault caused outrage among Kosovo Albanians and is seen as the incident that encouraged widespread armed resistance against Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic’s repressive regime.

On March 5, 1998, Smith said that he managed to travel close to the village of Prekaz in the Skenderaj/Srbica municipality, where Jashari, who had been fighting against Yugoslav rule over Kosovo, lived with his extended family.

“I saw the Serbian forces, I didn’t know where it was or what was happening but it was a kind of police operation and military attack,” Smith said on the 24th anniversary of the violence.

A total of 59 people, including women and children, were killed in the assault by Serbian police forces from March 5-7.

On March 6, Smith returned to the area, following the smoke that was rising into the sky.

“I climbed a hill and I had to crawl about 100 metres in front of me with a huge camera and then I saw the attack,” he said.

He recalled how many houses were on fire and others were being destroyed by bulldozers.

Smith and two others who were with him were spotted by the Serbian forces, who opened fire at them.

“A whole Kalashnikov cartridge of 30 bullets came in our direction in three bursts,” he said.

Later, when he decided to call his wife, he realised that his mobile phone had saved him from being hit in the stomach.

“My mobile phone had a bullet in it. I was about to call my wife and tell her that I was fine,” said Smith, who still has the phone to this day.

After filming in Prekaz, Smith and his crew went to the Hotel Grand in the centre of the capital Pristina to edit and their footage.

“It was a hotel connected to Serbian paramilitaries, and we were staying there, but they did not know what we had on the tape,” he said.

“We could pay to use their broadcasting services… the cassette would be put in the videotape and it would transmit live. I remember their eyes wide open when they saw the images but it was too late, it had been transmitted already and they could not stop it,” he added.

After Smith’s footage was broadcast, many other international media started to report on what was happening in Kosovo, and to focus on subsequent massacres in Abri in September 1998 and Recak in January 1999 – an incident that helped to convince NATO to intervene militarily two months later to end Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic’s repression.

Smith said he is grateful to the civilians who suffered in the war because “without the photos of that suffering, [Kosovo] would not have your independence… you know those massacres brought in NATO. It was an answer to that human suffering”.