EmergencyNet NEWS Service-Monday, April 6, 1999-17:56CDT

CRISIS NEWS BRIEFS

BELGIUM (EmergencyNet News) - A NATO spokesman said on Monday that alliance aircraft witnessed Yugoslav troops ethnically cleansing a Kosovo village over the weekend but could not stop it. Pilots took a series of detailed aerial photographs of Yugoslav armor deployed as troops emptied the village of Glodjane, the villagers being herded together and the houses torched after the population had gone.

MACEDONIA (EmergencyNet News) - Tens of thousands of hungry and exhausted Kosovo refugees were still stranded at the Macedonian border on Monday, while some west European countries appeared keen to stop an influx of refugees across their own frontiers. As NATO put the number of ethnic Albanians driven from their homes in Kosovo over the past year at 831,000, the United Nations refugee agency said that of 120,000 refugees in Macedonia, 85,000 were still camped in two cold and muddy border zones with Yugoslavia.

SERBIA (EmergencyNet News) - NATO intensified its aerial bombardment of Yugoslavia on Monday as a fresh influx of 44,000 refugees from Kosovo added to the chaos facing humanitarian aid workers on the borders with Albania and Macedonia. In the early hours of Monday NATO missiles struck at Yugoslavia's air force headquarters and a key army installation in the south of the country used for launching military operations in Kosovo.

WASHINGTON (EmergencyNet News) - U.S. Defense Secretary William Cohen says Serb military and police forces are "open and vulnerable" to stepped-up NATO air assaults. Cohen warned the Serbs that NATO attacks against Yugoslavia will be greatly expanded in the coming days. The DefSec said: "We're going after his tanks, his armored units, his artillery, those forces on the ground that are carrying out this horrific ethnic cleansing. They are going to be targeted now and taken out."

WASHINGTON (EmergencyNet News) - The United States said on Monday it has no intention of allowing Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic to preempt NATO objectives in Kosovo with a "phony peace deal." U.S. State Department spokesman James Rubin said that if Milosevic "thinks that in the coming days, he can stand up and declare this thing over through some action short of the objectives that we have set forth, he's sadly mistaken."

From the ERRI Watch Center

SERBIA (EmergencyNet News) - For the 13th straight day, NATO missiles and aircraft blasted Serbian targets inside Yugoslavia while the allies readied a massive airlift for ethnic Albanian refugees.

Serb targets reportedly struck as the weather cleared over Yugoslavia included roads, bridges, fuel depots, an air force building, army barracks and a TV relay tower. Serbian TV showed several buildings in flames.

Amid a new wave of NATO airstrikes early today in Belgrade, Pristina and other Yugoslav cities, the United States signaled an escalation of firepower to halt Serb attacks on Kosovo's Albanian majority.

Washington agreed to send 24 attack helicopters, 2,600 troops and a missile launching system to Albania to give NATO the ability to directly attack Serb troops and tanks in Kosovo, where more than 2,000 people have died over the past 13 months.

U.S. Defense Secretary William Cohen said on Monday: "We're going after his tanks, his armored units, his artillery, those forces on the ground that are carrying out this horrific ethnic cleansing. They are going to be targeted now and taken out."

In Belgrade, the independent Beta news agency reported a powerful explosion around midnight. More than 20 explosions were heard around Pristina, where NATO planes targeted an oil depot  Three powerful explosions early today also rocked Zemun, a northwestern district of the capital. Studio B radio said one of the targets was an air force command building.

Near the town of Kragujevac, 40 miles south of Belgrade, a huge fire was blazing after a fuel depot was hit. Six missiles also targeted the Slatina airport just west of Pristina.

The official Tanjug news agency reported that a bridge over the Ibar River, and a TV relay tower was also targeted. Both ends of a railway tunnel in the Ibar River valley were also hit, effectively cutting the line.

Four explosions were heard today in the Nis area, 125 miles south of  Belgrade, Beta reported, three of which hit the command building of the Yugoslav Third Army. Another of the targets was later identified as a military barracks in the center of the city. In Podgorica, Montenegro, sources in the pro-Western government said a large column of Serbian military vehicles including tanks, trucks and other armored vehicles was seen Sunday moving south of Belgrade on a highway that would take it to either Montenegro or Kosovo. The report on the armored column moving southward comes amid fears Milosevic may be planning a military coup in Montenegro to oust his political foe, President Milo Djukanovic.

NATO spokesman Jamie Shea said that about 44,000 ethnic Albanians streamed out of Kosovo on Sunday, and at least 831,000 of the two million prewar Kosovo population have been displaced since the conflict began in February 1998.

At the NATO briefing in Brussels, Belgium, Air Commodore David Wilby said the alliance would take advantage of better weather over Kosovo to accelerate its attacks. Alliance jets struck the province on Monday, receiving heavy anti-aircraft fire, but all NATO aircraft returned safely.

As proof of President Slobodan Milosevic's continued program of depopulation and deportation, Wilby showed an aerial photo of Godane, with armored vehicles stationed throughout the town and villagers gathered. Subsequent photos, he said, showed the people gone, the village ablaze.

The refugee crisis, meanwhile, was swelling to epic proportions in a wave of displacement whose scale has not been seen in Europe in a half-century.  The human tide has overwhelmed Albania, Macedonia and Montenegro.

As of today, 239,000 refugees had arrived in Albania, 120,000 in Macedonia and 35,000 in Montenegro.

WASHINGTON (EmergencyNet News) - A lot has been spoken about the Apache AH-64A helicopter, which is a very lethal weapon in which the Serbs will find out first hand sometime next week. Here's a description of the chopper:

The blunt-nosed, flat-bellied Apache AH-64A is the U.S. Army's primary attack helicopter and was used heavily in the 1991 Gulf War to knock out Iraqi tanks and other armor. It is equipped with a Target Acquisition Designation Sight and a Pilot Night Vision Sensor that permit its two-man crew to navigate and attack in darkness and in adverse weather conditions. The principal mission of the Apache is the destruction of high-value targets with a 30mm gun, 76 2.75 inch rockets and 16 Hellfire missiles. The two-seat Apache is powered by two General Electric turbine engines and has a range of 299 miles.

Other specifications:

Weight: Takeoff maximum 8.54 tons.

Length: 57 feet, 8 inches from main rotor tip to tail rotor tip.

Speed: 184 mph (cruise and level) 227 mph (maximum).

Manufacturer: McDonnell Douglas.

Unit Cost, ea.: $14.5 million.

Armament: 30mm gun, Hydra 70 rockets, Hellfire missiles, other specialized munitions.

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