EmergencyNet NEWS Service-Wednesday, March 31, 1999-16:57CST

CRISIS NEWS BRIEFS

BELGIUM/SERBIA (EmergencyNet News) - NATO said Wednesday it was intensifying its bombing of Yugoslavia, as more ethnic Albanians poured out of Kosovo and Serb troops reportedly closed in on a huge group of refugees inside the province. The alliance ruled out any Easter pause in the air raids.

RUSSIA (EmergencyNet News) - Russia, vowing to keep up pressure on NATO to stop bombing Yugoslavia, said on Wednesday it was sending a reconnaissance ship to the Mediterranean Sea and was considering sending six more. Defense Minister Igor Sergeyev announced the decision as Russian leaders unleashed another barrage of criticism of NATO air strikes on Yugoslavia after Prime Minister Yevgeny Primakov came home empty-handed from a peace mission to Belgrade.

SERBIA (EmergencyNet News) - It seems everybody has got some kind of complaint against the NATO Bombing campaign. Refugees arriving on Wednesday in northern Albania complained that NATO airstrikes in southern Kosovo have been ineffective as Western officials expressed new resolve to try to cripple the Yugoslav military. Refugees said bombs were hitting military buildings abandoned by the Yugoslav army and soldiers now were staying in homes left behind by fleeing ethnic Albanians. SACEUR General Wesley Clark has called for more firepower to accelerate the mission, but he has warned airstrikes would not be enough to stop attacks against civilians reportedly spearheaded by Serb militia units.

WASHINGTON (EmergencyNet News) - The White House suggested on Wednesday that NATO will carry out an open-ended campaign of air strikes against Yugoslavia until it stops "ethnic cleansing" against Kosovo's Albanians or its military is decimated. NATO said Wednesday that it had been authorized to dramatically expand the "range and tempo" of its eight-day-old air strikes, getting the green light to go after   Yugoslav government buildings in central Belgrade.

From the ERRI Watch Center

BELGIUM (EmergencyNet News) - The North Atlantic Treaty Organization said on Wednesday that it was intensifying its bombing of Yugoslavia, as more Albanians poured out of Kosovo and Serb troops reportedly closed in on a huge group of refugees inside the province. The alliance ruled out any Easter pause in the air raids.

The Western alliance said it had destroyed or severely damaged about 30 Yugoslav aircraft. It also said it had hit an airfield, an army garrison, an airborne brigade headquarters and a military police headquarters in Serbia. A full list of the targets reported hit can be found later in this report.

NATO Secretary-General Javier Solana had authorized the military to "extend the range and tempo of operations to maximize the effectiveness of the campaign."

The White House suggested Wednesday the NATO air strikes against Yugoslavia were an open-ended campaign. A White House spokesman said: "We have no firm timetable for this. Either President Milosevic is going to change his calculation or we are going to continually and systematically hit his military and deprive him of the ability to impose his will."

Western diplomats in the Balkans said that Serbian forces with tanks and heavy artillery have overrun ethnic Albanian guerrillas trying to defend a valley in central Kosovo where as many as 50,000 refugees are sheltering.

One diplomat in frequent contact with the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) said: "Serbian attacks on the Pagarusa Valley continue and the problem there is much more acute than yesterday. The KLA put up a fight but from what I can gather they were blown away by T-55 tanks. There's nothing between the civilians sheltering in the valley and the Serbs. There's obviously the potential for a huge tragedy."

The valley, about 30 miles southwest of Kosovo's capital Pristina, does not lie near international borders and there is no easy escape route. Despite NATO's aerial onslaught, a NATO spokesman said Serb forces were still expelling ethnic Albanian residents from Kosovo and destroying public records and archives. Refugees arriving in neighboring Albania, Macedonia and Montenegro told of seeing relatives and neighbors killed in cold blood.

Many said Serb troops had stripped them of identity papers and even car license plates to deprive them of proof they were ever Yugoslav citizens and prevent them from returning.

BELGIUM (EmergencyNet News) - The following is the most detailed overview yet of NATO's military strikes against Yugoslavia. These were carried out on the first five days of the campaign:

• -- Around 90 attacks were carried out against at least 70 individual sites.
• -- Eight airfields were targeted, leading to the destruction of at least seven aircraft and one helicopter on the ground.
• -- Four MiG 29s, the Yugoslav's most modern and capable fighters, and one MiG 21 were shot down.
• -- There were at least 16 attacks on radar and early warning sites.
• -- 18 surface-to-air missile sites were attacked, and 12 of the other 15 air defense facilities.
• -- Headquarters and other "static facilities" were heavily targeted, such as buildings housing the Serbian interior ministry police.
• -- There were attacks on army headquarters and a range of support buildings, including ammunition dumps and other storage sites.

By Steve Macko, ERRI Risk Analyst

The U.S. B1 bombers which will fly missions against Serb forces from their base in Britain are capable of unleashing a terrifying rain of death on troops or buildings. The supersonic B1-B Lancer aircraft were originally designed to deliver nuclear weapons deep into Soviet territory.

The planes have an enormous payload - they are now capable of carrying 20 cruise missiles and 130 500-pound bombs. That would be enough ordnance on its own to devastate an entire town, and all capable of being delivered from one of the best-protected aircraft in the world.

Its four-man crew can call on sophisticated defense systems originally aimed at ensuring its nuclear punch could be delivered safely, as well as the more standard chaff and flare systems used by NATO aircraft. These are released to confuse incoming heat-seeking missiles. The B1 carries thousands of millions of pieces of chaff.

The plane's tail gear also houses a surveillance system to detect incoming attacks or hostile aircraft. It automatically triggers counter-measures once it has identified the threat or established whether aircraft are "friend or foe." The bombers also have a huge range and can fly about 7,500 miles on their 163,000 gallon fuel tanks. The huge aircraft is controlled by the crew from their cockpit, which was designed to protect them against the after-flare of a nuclear strike.

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