NATO responds to Milosevic's refusal to withdraw troops

Published: Wednesday, May 12, 1999

BELGRADE, Yugoslavia {AP} NATO bombarded a wide swath of Yugoslavia on Tuesday, saying it does not believe Slobodan Milosevic has begun withdrawing his forces from Kosovo. Five people were killed and a senior official touring a fuel depot was wounded in the allied attacks, Serb media said.

NATO said there was no evidence Yugoslavia had withdrawn any of the estimated 40,000 troops and special police it had deployed in the Serbian province since launching a crackdown in February.

Some 750,000 ethnic Albanians have been expelled since NATO air strikes began March 24.

In Washington, Defense Secretary William Cohen said NATO will accept nothing less than a total withdrawal of Milosevic's military and police forces from Kosovo as part of its conditions to halt the air campaign.

Yugoslavia has given no hint of meeting the full NATO demands. The military said Monday that troops in Kosovo would be reduced to "peacetime" levels an estimated 12,000 when there is an agreement to deploy a U.N. mission in the province.

In the continuing NATO barrage, an elderly married couple and a 4-year-old girl in a Serb village in Kosovo were among those killed in NATO attacks, Yugoslav media reported.

Fighting inside Kosovo province between Serb and ethnic Albanian forces also continued, rebel sources said.

Three Kosovo Liberation Army fighters were killed and 20 injured in an attack by Yugoslav MiG warplanes in Kosovo near the Albanian border, the sources said, speaking on condition of anonymity. They also claimed one Serb plane was downed, but that could not be independently confirmed.

Thirty rebels were evacuated to a hospital in Albania, international monitors said, but it was unclear where they were fighting. The Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe was also trying to verify the claim warplanes were used.

NATO missiles rained down while an official group toured the Jugopetrol oil storage depot in Nis, reputed headquarters of officers commanding the Kosovo operation. The state-run Tanjug news agency reported one person died in the southern industrial city and another in a nearby village.

Secretary-General Gorica Gajevic of Milosevic's ruling Socialist Party said she was protected by other officials as a missile landed 60 feet away, but Dusko Matkovic, a deputy chairman of the party, was hospitalized after being struck in the arm. A policeman was killed in the attack.

Air raid sirens wailed over Belgrade, and explosions and sounds of anti-aircraft fire resounded from a nearby military airfield and Lipovica forest, a suspected military communications and air defense site 10 miles from the Yugoslav capital.

Meanwhile, at Kukes, an Albanian town turned into a vast refugee camp, U.N. officials said Tuesday the latest group of 3,677 severely traumatized refugees reported being shot at on the way out of Kosovo by Serb civilians with rifles. Among the injured were three children.