EmergencyNet News Service-Friday, March 26, 1999-18:31CST

CRISIS NEWS BRIEFS

BELGIUM/SERBIA (EmergencyNet News) - Senior NATO alliance officials said on Friday that NATO air raids have so far failed to halt brutal Serb attacks on ethnic Albanian civilians in Kosovo. Serbian jails were reportedly being emptied of a number of hard-line criminals to swell the ranks of feared paramilitary units now roaming unchecked through Kosovo.

SERBIA (EmergencyNet News) - NATO bombed Yugoslavia by day for the first time on Friday and Serb forces, powerless to stop the onslaught, were reported taking revenge on Kosovo Albanians. Two Yugoslav MiG-29 warplanes were shot down over neighboring Bosnia after they apparently tried to fire on the NATO peacekeeping forces deployed there since 1995, which are not directly involved in the Kosovo conflict. A NATO spokesman said the two pilots were in NATO detention.

SWITZERLAND/SERBIA (EmergencyNet News) - According to humanitarian agencies and Western politicians on Friday, Yugoslav forces appear to have kept up or even increased attacks on Albanians in and around Kosovo despite NATO bombing raids. Aid workers from the United Nations refugee agency, UNHCR, said people who fled to northern Albania had told them Serbian forces attacked the village of Goden on Thursday, setting 90 percent of it ablaze and executing 20 local men.

From the ERRI Watch Center

SERBIA (EmergencyNet News) - The war in the Balkans intensified on Friday. NATO bombed Yugoslavia by day for the first time and Serb forces, powerless to stop the onslaught, were reported taking revenge on Kosovo Albanians. Two Yugoslav MiG-29 warplanes were shot down over neighboring Bosnia after they apparently tried to attack the NATO peacekeeping forces deployed there since 1995, which are not directly involved in the Kosovo conflict.   The two pilots who, of course, lost their planes were in NATO custody.

The government in Belgrade showed no sign of bowing to the West's demands that it agree to a peace deal for Kosovo and allow NATO-led peacekeepers into the wartorn southern Serbian province. A cruise missile launched from the U.S. warship Philippine Sea and bombs struck suburbs of Belgrade -- the first daylight blows after two nights of attacks. NATO, which is waging its first campaign of arms against a sovereign state, said in Brussels it had struck 50 targets in 400 sorties since the air war began Wednesday evening.

But even as NATO blasted Yugoslav air defenses and military bases, Serb police and masked irregulars reportedly burned homes and shops and killed ethnic Albanian civilians in western Kosovo. An aid worker said from the town of Djakovica: "Military and paramilitary forces are going into houses and killing people indiscriminately."

NATO's Supreme Commander General Wesley Clark acknowledged that air power alone could not stop such reprisals.

Thousands of ethnic Albanian refugees were reported fleeing from Kosovo to neighboring Albania and Macedonia. Yugoslav fighter-bombers reportedly attacked a Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) stronghold in central Kosovo on Friday. The report could not be independently confirmed.

Violence broke out at the U.S. embassy in Athens as thousands of anti-NATO demonstrators protested against the bombing raids. British Defense Minister George Robertson said intelligence reports indicated Yugoslav forces had shelled two villages in northern Albania and attacked another inside Kosovo on Thursday. A report from Kosovo Albanian sources said a prominent Kosovo Albanian lawyer and his two sons had been shot and killed and their bodies dumped in a Pristina street by Serbian police.

According to Western military sources in touch with Kosovo, a key Yugoslav special forces base at Hajvalia in Kosovo was hit in NATO air strikes and 100 percent destroyed with substantial human casualties.

The sources said an ammunition dump at Grmija hill outside the Kosovo capital, Pristina, was hit and 60 percent destroyed. A target at Pristina's Tito barracks was also hit.

Two large radar domes and communications masts on Golash Mountain in Kosovo were attacked repeatedly by NATO but one mast was still standing, although it may no longer be working. Radar installations were also hit at Slatina, near Pristina. Buildings at Pristina airport were targeted and destroyed but the runway was not targeted.

© Copyright, EmergencyNet NEWS Service, 1999. All Rights Reserved.Redistribution without permission is prohibited by law.