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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