Attacks by NATO aircraft on Yugoslavia last night have been described as the most intensive of the two-week-old campaign. A NATO official in Brussels said improved weather and clear skies had allowed around one hundred planes to carry out four waves of attacks on more than 30 targets including bridges, roads and security force barracks.
The official Yugoslav news agency said at least five civilians were killed and twenty were injured in an attack on a residential area in the central town of Aleksinac. The agency said NATO also destroyed a railway bridge over the Danube linking Serbia to Croatia and hit an oil refinery near Serbia's second largest city, Novi Sad.
This morning Britain's defence Secretary George Robertson said the campaign is beginning to have an effect on President Milosevic. Mr Robertson said that the NATO air attacks on Yugoslavia are "systematically cutting the sinews of President Slobodan Milosevic's war machine". He predicted that Yugoslavia was likely to run out of fuel in the very near future. Mr Robertson said that if reports today of civilian casualties from the NATO attacks were true, they would be deeply regrettable, but he insisted that the air strikes will continue. He said NATO had gone to enormous lengths to avoid such casualties, but they would inevitably occur in a campaign of this size and complexity.
Last night's attacks were the thirteenth night of strikes on Yugoslavia. US President Bill Clinton has said the intention is to persist until NATO prevailed.
Meanwhile, the American Secretary of State, Madeleine Albright, has said the United States will hold those responsible for war crimes in Kosovo accountable for their actions. She said there was no question that war crimes and crimes against humanity were being committed in Kosovo, and there was little doubt that the orders to carry out such acts were coming from the top.
