Serbia marks 15th anniversary of NATO bombing campaign

BELGRADE - Serbia is on Monday marking the Remembrance Day for the victims of the NATO bombing campaign which killed around 3,000 and wounded around 12,000 people 15 years ago.

During the 78-day air raids, 1,008 Yugoslav Forces troops and Serbian policemen were killed, as well as around 1,500 civilians, including 89 children, while about a dozen people remain missing.

Around 6,000 civilians were wounded, including 2,700 children, as well as 5,173 military troops and policemen. Ethnic Albanians in Kosovo-Metohija account for more than half of the casualties.

The decision to attack the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (FRY) was the first in history to be made without the approval of the UN Security Council, and the order was given to US General Wesley Clark, the allied commander at the time, by NATO Secretary General Javier Solana on March 23, 1999.

Later on, in his book Waging Modern War, Clark revealed that the plans for the air strikes against the FRY were well under way in mid-June 1998 and completed in late August that year.

However, the FRY was attacked seven months later, under the pretext of failure of the talks on the future status of the province of Kosovo-Metohija, held in Rambouillet and Paris, after the Serbian authorities, headed by then-president Slobodan Milosevic, refused to accept a military annex to the agreement that practically implied an occupation of the entire country.

After the decision on non-acceptance of foreign troops was ratified by the Serbian parliament, which proposed the UN forces to monitor a peaceful resolution of conflicts in Kosovo, the 19-member Alliance launched air raids on March 24, 1999 at 7.45 p.m. CET.

The attack lasted until 4 a.m. and the first...