NATO says that it has doubled the number of nightly attacks on Serbian targets since the start of its air campaign four weeks ago. Its spokesman, Jamie Shea, said that there had been more than thirty strikes yesterday despite bad weather. They included a Belgrade tower block housing the headquarters of Serbia's ruling socialist party. Mr. Shea also told the daily briefing in Brussels that NATO had new reports of atrocities, with Yugoslav forces targeting ethnic Albanian doctors and ethnic Albanian patients being expelled from the Pristina hospital.
The British Prime Minister has appealed to Russia to help solve the Kosovo crisis. Tony Blair asked for talks with President Boris Yeltsin's Balkan peace envoy, the former Prime Minister Viktor Chernomyrdin. However, Mr Blair says that Moscow had to understand why Nato had launched air strikes against Yugoslavia. Mr. Chernnomrydin is expected to visit Belgrade for talks this week. The United Nations aid agency, the UNHCR, is appealing to Western governments to take Kosovo Albanian refugees away from Macedonia, as relief camps there are full. The Macedonian government has once again been keeping refugees trapped on the border.
The Serb media has reported that NATO missiles have hit a Croatian Serb refugee camp in Kosovo, killing four people, including children, and injuring others. The reported attack was on the settlement in Djakovica, which housed several hundred refugees from the war earlier this decade in Croatia. NATO warplanes pounded a number of targets throughout Yugoslavia for a 28th night. Yugoslav officials say that last night's the bombing certainly caused casualties. It is also been reported that NATO missiles hit the last bridge still standing over the River Danube in Yugoslavia's second city of Novi Sad. The city's oil refinery was again attacked and set on fire. A local television transmitter was also hit.
NATO claimed that two French soldiers have been injured and one of their vehicles set on fire in what's been described as the most serious anti-NATO incident to date in the conflict. The attack took place yesterday fifteen miles north of the Macedonian capital Skopje. International monitors in the Balkans said that Serb and Albanian troops exchanged gunfire for the first time in the Kosovo crisis. This follows an increase in tension along Yugoslavia's borders with its western neighbours. The United Nations Security Council has also ordered an investigation, following Croatia's complaint that Belgrade sent up to 300 soldiers into a disputed demilitarised zone bordering Montenegro.
