NATO mistakenly hits hospital, market place killing 15 in Nis A man raises his arms and screams in despair in front of his house in Nis on Friday, after a NATO airstirke hit.
MSNBC STAFF AND WIRE REPORTS
BELGRADE, May 7 - Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic said Friday that NATO first would have to stop its bombing before he talks about a Western-Russian plan to end the conflict. Even as he spoke, NBC News confirmed that NATO bombs hit a hospital and a marketplace in Serbia's third largest city, Nis, killing 15 people and injuring 70.
NBC's Kevin Tibbles reports that he saw three civilian areas struck in Nis on Friday.
YUGOSLAVIA ACCUSED NATO planes of dropping "cluster bombs" on the crowded outdoor market and a hospital complex. The Yugoslav reports said the bomb site was nowhere near a military target - a claim U.S. Air Force maps obtained by NBC News would seem to verify.
NBC's Kevin Tibbles, who visited the scene in Nis Friday, reported that he saw three civilian areas struck: the Bolnica Gradanska hospital parking lot; the main market near the central bus station and a residential district near an airfield in the Medosovac district.
The first two appear to have been struck by cluster bombs in daylight, while the third was hit with a large bomb last night. Tibbles described the scene at all three sites as gruesome.
In response, NATO said its aircraft had attacked a radio relay station and an airfield at Nis but it had no indication that bombs done the kind of damage described by the Yugoslavs.