Horror haunts Kosovo girl who lost her family 26 years ago 

Muqolli was 13 years old when Serbian forces surrounded her village, Poklek, in central Kosovo, then southern province of Serbia

PRISTINA, Kosovo (MNTV) – When her mother and five siblings were killed in the 1999 Poklek massacre in Kosovo, 13-year-old Elhame Muqolli escaped through a window and later rebuilt her life in the United States. But she can never forget.

Elhame Muqolli describes living in a “cloudy space” for the past 26 years – cloudy from the smoke she recalls when the grenades exploded on April 17, 1999, killing her mother and her five siblings.

“When the first bomb exploded, all I saw was smoke and tiny fragments flying through the air,” said Muqolli.

“I couldn’t hear anything; I don’t know if it was actual smoke that filled the room, or if it just seemed that way to me. But I still live in that cloudy space. I can’t escape it. It’s always with me.”

Muqolli was 13 years old when Serbian forces surrounded her village, Poklek, in central Kosovo, then a southern province of Serbia.

Three weeks earlier, NATO had launched air strikes to halt a brutal counter-insurgency war by forces under then Serbian strongman leader Slobodan Milosevic; in response, Milosevic’s forces intensified their campaign of ethnic cleansing and mass killings.

Muqolli’s family had spent two months moving from village to village to escape the Serbian shelling; in mid-April, her father hiding in the forests, the rest of the family returned to Poklek and gathered at a house belonging to her uncle Fadil, a member of the guerrilla Kosovo Liberation Army.

Early on the morning of April 17, Muqolli heard her mother, Shemsije, then 41 years old, telling them to grab their things because Serbian forces were advancing.

Despite the passage of 26 years, Elhame Muqolli continues to live with the indelible scars of the Poklek massacre that claimed her mother and siblings.

While she has rebuilt her life in the United States, her memories remain tethered to that fateful day.