Nato Bombs KLA

CounterPunch sitka at teleport.com
Sat May 22 10:10:06 PDT 1999


Kosovo Rebels Bombed

NATO Error Possible

By R. Jeffrey Smith

Washington Post Foreign Service

Saturday, May 22, 1999; Page A15

KUKES, Albania, May 21 Three bombs were dropped

with high precision by a fighter plane early this morning

onto a former Yugoslav military barracks taken over last

month by ethnic Albanian guerrillas, killing seven rebels

and wounding 25, according to Kosovo Liberation Army

officials and fighters who witnessed the attack.

While a rebel commander at the scene blamed the

attack on a Yugoslav MiG-21 fighter jet, there were

numerous indications that the barracks was struck by

NATO bombs. The attack occurred in an area where

NATO jets enjoy air superiority and have been

relentlessly bombing Yugoslav military forces for much

of the past week.

In addition, rebels at the site reported the sky was

cloudy when the bombs were dropped, which would

have made such an accurate strike difficult by the

unguided bombs in the Yugoslav arsenal.

Pentagon spokesman Kenneth Bacon said tonight,

"We've seen those reports and we're looking into them."

If it is confirmed that NATO carried out the attack, it

would be an embarrassment for both the alliance and

the ethnic Albanian guerrillas. The Kosovo Liberation

Army has eagerly sought closer relations with NATO,

which has kept them at arm's length in several ways

even though both are battling Serb-led Yugoslav forces.

NATO has refused publicly to supply the KLA with arms

and opposes the rebels' desire for full independence,

rather than just autonomy, for Kosovo -- a province of

Serbia, the dominant republic of Yugoslavia.

The former Yugoslav barracks was struck shortly after

7:30 this morning (1:30 a.m. EDT) in Koshare, a village

a mile from the Albanian border southwest of the city of

Djakovica, where Yugoslav planes have not flown for

weeks. In the past week, KLA forces had felt confident

enough of their control of Koshare and the surrounding

area to invite Western journalists to visit.

A video taken at the scene a few moments after the

bombing shows that the airstrike demolished one end of

the two-story brick building, sending a second-floor

concrete slab crashing down onto the sleeping troops.

The roof was largely destroyed and the bodies of

several rebels were strewn among the debris.

"It was a big explosion," said the rebel commander on

the scene, who did not give his name in videotaped

remarks. He organized efforts to pull several of the most

seriously wounded victims from beneath the wreckage.

"According to the guards . . . this was from the air" and

could not have come from enemy artillery.

Rebel forces in the area were tied up for most of the day

while the injured were sent to the military hospital in

Tirana, the Albanian capital.

Since NATO's airstrikes began on March 24, both the

rebels and NATO war planners have devoted substantial

effort to ensure that the alliance struck only Yugoslav

and not rebel forces, estimated to be in the thousands.

"You have to admire their courage and their ability to

endure, their commitment to their goals," Lt. Gen. John

W. Hendrix, commander of U.S. forces in Albania, said

in an interview in Tirana on Thursday. He said that while

NATO was not cooperating directly with the rebels,

"militarily, we have to find out . . . where they are,

where they intend to be, what their operations are" to be sure

that NATO airstrikes do not hit the wrong forces.

On most days, Western officials say, rebel commanders

inform Western civilian officials of their activities via

satellite telephone calls from the field, and these

officials pass the information to NATO's military headquarters in Brussels.

The use of these intermediaries enables alliance officials

to avoid the political pitfalls of working directly with

the rebels. But some KLA officials have complained that this

indirect arrangement has inhibited military efficiency and

led to NATO airstrikes on less-than-optimal targets in

Kosovo.

NATO warplanes have not been linked to any previous

bombing of Kosovo Liberation Army forces in Kosovo,

although they have accidentally struck more than a

dozen civilian targets in Yugoslavia during their nearly

two-month campaign against hundreds of military

targets throughout the country.

Copyright 1999 The Washington Post Company

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