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KOSOVO POLJE, Yugoslavia (AP) - The head nurse at the Serbian clinic answered the telephone and without replying thrust the receiver out so a visitor could hear the caller.
"We'll get your mother," the voice said, speaking Serbian with an Albanian accent. "Go away! Go away!" Nurse Jasmina Brocic shook her head. "It happens all the time. We get calls like this every day."
The Serbs in this enclave eight kilometres southwest of Pristina, the provincial capital of Kosovo, feel themselves under siege. They say they are threatened by ethnic Albanians, discriminated against by NATO-led peacekeepers and abandoned by their own government in Belgrade.
Those sentiments heightened dramatically after a grenade attack last Tuesday at an outdoor market here killed at least two Serbian men and injured about 40 other Serbs. NATO said two ethnic Albanians and two unidentified people were arrested.
The victims were brought to the two-storey, brick clinic where Brocic works. With Serbs afraid to venture to the provincial hospital in Pristina, the tiny, under-equipped clinic has become the main health-care facility for Serbs in isolated communities near the city.
A staff of five doctors and about 70 nurses and support staff maintain the facility, some even sleeping here, not only because of the workload but for fear of attack by ethnic Albanians.
"Albanians hang around the fence at night," Brocic said. "And we get weird phone calls all the time." She said one Serbian man was stabbed near the clinic a few nights earlier.
By day, however, the clinic, located next to a Russian military hospital, serves as a safe haven. Serbs gather under Russian protection to pass the time, exchange gossip and ponder the future in a province where many of them fear they have none.
For the men whiling away the hours in the clinic parking lot, the main topic in recent days has been the grenade attack and its implications for the future.
"If things don't get better, we'll fight the Albanians, even KFOR," said one Serbian man, referring to the NATO-led Kosovo Force. "What choice do we have?"
The men, who refused to give their names for fear of Albanian reprisal, have little else to do. Many quit or were forced from their jobs by ethnic Albanians after the peacekeepers arrived in June.
A few Serbs in town, they said, speak fluent Albanian and from time to time make the dangerous drive into Serbia to pick up food, newspapers and other supplies. The couriers drive cars fitted with license tags from mostly ethnic Albanian towns to reduce suspicion, the men said.
Inside the clinic, visitors and outpatients shuffled in and out. A group of sullen men and women - most well into middle-age - sat in the waiting room.
For those who need extensive treatment, the clinic has little to offer. The facility has rooms for only nine patients. The overflow must sleep on beds in the hallway.
The most serious cases are either taken to the Russian hospital or evacuated under Russian military escort to the southern Serbian city of Nis.
Brocic said the clinic has two cardiac monitors but lacks proper equipment for coronary cases.
"Since KFOR came, we've had two patients die here because of a lack of proper equipment," Brocic said.
Serbian women give birth in a tiny, 2�-by-three-metre room with three beds.
"Once we had three women give birth here within an hour," Brocic said. "Two Gypsies and one Serb."
During the NATO bombing campaign, Brocic said the clinic was well-stocked with bandages and medicine. Since the bombing ended in June and Yugoslav forces evacuated, stocks have been running low.
She said private German organizations and the French humanitarian group Doctors of the World had donated some supplies, "but they were very small and they're almost all gone."