NATO Missiles Said To Kill 100 In Kosovo
By Philippa Fletcher
BELGRADE (Reuters) - At least 100 ethnic Albanians were killed and scores injured when NATO missiles tore into a village in southwest Kosovo during the night, survivors and Serbian civil defense officials said Friday.
NATO said it was investigating the report which, if confirmed, would mark the Western alliance's deadliest error so far in its 52-day-old campaign of air strikes on Yugoslavia.
The Civil Defense Information Center in the Kosovo regional capital Pristina reported that 100 people died and some 50 were injured in the attack, but said the toll was expected to rise.
Reporters reaching the village of Korisa, 70 kms (45 miles) southwest of the Kosovo capital Pristina, saw scenes of devastation, with dismembered bodies scattered around, several badly charred and some with smoke rising from them.
Survivor Fehmi Ahmeta said the village was packed with some 500 refugees on their way home after hiding in the woods when it was hit by six missiles shortly before midnight.
It was not clear whether the refugees feared NATO bombs or Yugoslav forces, who were reported by others reaching nearby Albania to have driven people from their homes in recent days.
NATO said it had conducted its heaviest night of raids on Yugoslavia since launching its air war on March 24, but could not confirm the bombing of Korisa. The alliance said it was carrying out a ``full and thorough investigation.'' ``I am not going to speak on this incident until I have the facts,'' NATO spokesman Jamie Shea said in Brussels.
NATO has admitted a series of mistakes and accidents in its bombing campaign aimed at halting Serb repression in Kosovo.
Previous blunders include attacks on residential areas, a passenger train, a bus and a refugee convoy, and the accidental bombing of China's embassy in Belgrade. Yugoslavia says more than 1,200 civilians have been killed and 5,000 injured since NATO's bombing began.
While expressing regret, NATO has always insisted that Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic started the conflict in Kosovo, a majority ethnic Albanian province in southern Serbia.
A British junior defense minister, John Spellar, declined comment on the Korisa incident but said Milosevic's forces in Kosovo were making ethnic Albanians stand under bridges during NATO bombing raids so as to claim them as civilian casualties.
NATO said that in overnight raids it hit tanks, military vehicles, artillery and troops on the ground in Kosovo. Power was knocked out in Serbia's three biggest cities.
In Albania, U.S. artillery units which support Apache attack helicopters exercised with live fire Friday in a sign that the Apaches -- fast, low-flying helicopters for fighting ground troops and tanks -- were close to going into action in Kosovo.
NATO hopes their deployment will mark a breakthrough in the campaign. It says bombing raids to date have already taken a heavy toll, but Yugoslavia's defense minister insisted they had failed to destroy his military.
``After 51 days of war, we have not had serious losses in any Yugoslav unit,'' Pavle Bulatovic told a Greek newspaper.
Yugoslavia has said it is withdrawing troops from Kosovo, but Belgrade's ambassador to Greece, Dragomir Vucicevic, said Friday it would not pull back any more until NATO stopped its bombing campaign and removed forces from neighboring countries.
In Moscow, Russia's Balkans envoy Viktor Chernomyrdin said Friday he would return to Belgrade next week with ``many proposals'' for ending the Yugoslav conflict.
Chernomyrdin, returning from talks in Helsinki with Finnish President Martti Ahtisaari, also said he saw signs of diplomatic progress but stressed that NATO must stop its bombing campaign.
Earlier he told Itar-Tass news agency he would fly to Belgrade with Ahtisaari, who has emerged as a potential key Western mediator in the Kosovo crisis. But one senior European diplomat said Ahtisaari would go to Yugoslavia only if Russia and the West could agree on the makeup of a future Kosovo peace force.
China, a key player by virtue of its veto right on the U.N. Security Council, sent a signal that its fury may be abating after NATO's bombing of its Belgrade embassy a week ago, in which three people were killed.
Chinese President Jiang Zemin, who had refused at the weekend to speak to President Clinton, took a phone call from him Friday and Clinton expressed his ``sincere condolences'' over the embassy bombing. White House spokesman Joe Lockhart called the 30-minute conversation ``constructive.''
In Geneva, the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) said it sent its first staff and aid supplies into Kosovo since pulling out of the war zone on March 29.
An ICRC spokesman said a four-vehicle convoy carrying food and shelter materials had driven into Pristina, some eight hours after leaving Belgrade early Friday morning.
U.S. First Lady Hillary Clinton toured a refugee camp in Macedonia Friday and appealed to the world not to grow immune to the plight of ethnic Albanians.
U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan said he would visit Macedonia and Albania next week. U.N. officials said the flow of Kosovo refugees into Albania had virtually halted Friday.
Australia, meanwhile, said two of its aid workers, detained in Yugoslavia since late March, had been charged with spying. The Canberra government has called the charges preposterous.