War Reaches Belgrade; Nato Downs Two Migs Serb Jets May Have Been Attempting To Punish Allied Troops In Bosnia

In a powerful attack that sent the threat of war into the heart of Yugoslavia’s capital for the first time, NATO forces struck near the center of Belgrade Friday with earth-shaking explosions that lit the night sky and sent terrified residents rushing for bomb shelters.

The intense bombardment came hours after NATO warplanes shot down two Yugoslav MiG29 fighters that had flown across the border and posed a possible threat to NATO-led peacekeeping troops on the ground in Bosnia.

The two Yugoslav jets were shot down about 8:35 PST near the town of Teocak, in Bosnia, a former Yugoslav republic that declared independence in 1992.

The jets were flying in forbidden air space over Bosnia, where 32,000 NATO peacekeeping troops are stationed to enforce a peace agreement there. The troops include 6,900 Americans from the Texas-based 1st Cavalry Division.

The planes were shot down about five miles inside Bosnia over a remote, mountainous region in the sector patrolled by Russian peacekeepers.

“They’re unable to interfere with the military operations being conducted in Serbia and Kosovo, and so they were lashing out in an act of desperation, and they were shot down,” said James Rubin, a spokesman for the State Department.

“It’s certainly a serious event, certainly a serious challenge, said Pentagon spokesman Kenneth Bacon. “If it’s an escalation, we were prepared for it.”

Bacon said it was not immediately clear why the MiG29s were flying over Bosnia. He said they could have been trying to attack the NATO ground troops, trying to lure NATO warplanes into a trap, or even trying to defect.

Soon after, NATO launched its third round of airstrikes against military targets inside Yugoslavia. NATO commanders vowed to strip Yugoslavia of its air defenses so they can start sending in low flying jets to start attacking the Yugoslav Serb ground forces that are reportedly continuing to attack and murder ethnic Albanians in Kosovo.

“We are very systematically taking out the meat of the defense systems,” said NATO Air Commodore David Wilby at the alliance’s headquarters in Brussels, Belgium.

Friday’s assault started with the first daytime attack, a single Tomahawk cruise missile launched against a Yugoslav airfield from a U.S. ship in the Adriatic Sea.

At least seven B-52 bombers followed later into the darkened skies, launching another bruising round of cruise missiles at the reinforced concrete bunkers from which Yugoslav officers run the country’s surface-to-air missiles and anti-aircraft guns.

In the Yugoslav capital of Belgrade, three eye witnesses said, explosions shattered the night in an attack so intense, downtown buildings shook with the force of the blasts. For the first time, people in downtown Belgrade took the threat seriously and by early evening were pouring into underground bomb shelters. The wail of air sirens pierced the air.

The eyewitnesses reported huge white flashes followed by enormous orange fireballs. Shortly afterward, there were five very large and very distinct fires on the southwest horizon. Hundreds of people left their homes to watch the flames. Two hours later, a huge smudge of smoke showing orange lingered in the western sky.

By 12:30 a.m. Belgrade time, the city was in a virtual blackout.

Eyewitnesses said the strikes hammered the military airfield at Batajnica for a third day in a row, and also hit a chemical plant or oil refinery near the capital.

Wilby said the attacks from warships in the Adriatic Sea and from NATO planes had hit more than 50 targets by Friday. Among the sites hit, he said, were a support facility for a surface-to-air missile site at Danilovgrad installation, a heliport and vehicle storage depot at Novi Sad, and an aviation repair facility at Batajnica.

Pentagon officials also said the raids have hit sites used by Serb military against Albanians in and around Kosovo, including a large ammunition dump, a fuel supply depot, several headquarters for Serb police units, and a command post for the Serbs’ Third Army, the main Serb unit trying to take control of Kosovo.

“We believe we have hit some troops as well, because when you attack headquarters, tend to have barracks around them, they tend to have military people around them, and we probably have hit some military people,” said Pentagon spokesman Bacon.

Earlier attacks also downed three other MiG fighters, all inside Yugoslavia. NATO fighters now have destroyed one third of Yugoslavia’s best fighters.

“Our attacks have been effective,” said Wilby, a member of the British Royal Air Force assigned to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization.

But he cautioned that even three straight rounds of attacks from missiles and bombs still had not provoked the Serb forces into using their surface to air missiles and thus exposing them to swift destruction. The hidden, Soviet-era missiles remain a threat to the slower and lower flying jets that will eventually be used to attack tanks and armored forces that support the Serb troops waging war on the ethnic Albanians in Kosovo.

“It’s a very difficult part of the world to conduct any sort of campaign.” he said. “The terrain is not good and, as you know, the weather at the moment is not particularly good. So, what we want to do is to concentrate on taking the air defenses down and then we can go for the secondary targets.”

But with reports of Serb atrocities against Albanians continuing to filter out of the closed country, Wilby added, “We need to address the problem on the ground to stop the troops as soon as possible.”

In Moscow, where the Russian government is the most vocal critic of the NATO attacks, Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov told journalists Friday that more than 100 people have been killed in the attacks and 400 wounded.

Russia tried Friday to get the United Nations Security Council to demand an immediate end to the bombing, but lost on a 12-3 vote. Voting for the resolution were China, Namibia and Russia.

Russia expelled two NATO representatives in fresh reaction to the attacks on Yugoslavia and announced plans to send humanitarian aid to Belgrade.

Graphic with map: Air-to-air combat

Knight Ridder