NATO airstrikes hit oil refineries in Pancevo and Novi Sad
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April 18, 1999
Web posted at: 3:03 p.m. EDT (1903 GMT)

In this story: 'Chain gangs' reported in Kosovo Yugoslav media say 3-year-old girl killed NATO leaders still say no ground invasion More questions about convoy attack RELATED STORIES, SITES

BELGRADE (CNN) -- As more evidence surfaced of alleged mass executions of Kosovo Albanians on Sunday, Yugoslavia broke off diplomatic relations with neighboring Albania, inflaming an already volatile relationship between the two countries.

"From Albanian territory we have had about 10 days now continuous aggression ... with the use of infantry, terrorists ... which was mainly directed against border posts in Yugoslavia and Albania," Yugoslav Foreign Minister Zivadin Jovanovic told CNN.

"In the situation when you have neighboring country aggressing Yugoslavia, there is no purpose of featuring normal, diplomatic relations," Jovanovic said on CNN's "Late Edition."

A key border crossing between the two countries was closed after five ethnic Albanian refugees died when their car struck a mine less than 100 feet short of the Albanian frontier. The closing comes as new waves of Kosovars poured into neighboring Albania and Macedonia over the weekend.

NATO says the refugees were pushed out of their villages by Serb forces conducting a campaign of "ethnic cleansing" in Kosovo, a province of Serbia. Yugoslavia claims they are fleeing NATO bombing raids, which began March 24 in an effort to force the Yugoslav government to accept a peace plan for Kosovo.

NATO pilots continued those attacks Sunday, striking oil refineries in Serbia and key military targets in Kosovo, including 13 armored vehicles.

British military officials estimated Sunday that Yugoslavia has about 40,000 troops in Kosovo, supported by 300 tanks, plus armored personnel carriers and artillery.

Yugoslavia now has no functioning crude oil refining capacity, NATO spokesman Jamie Shea said, after the 25th day of NATO airstrikes hit oil refineries in Pancevo, outside Belgrade, and in Novi Sad.

'Chain gangs' reported in Kosovo

NATO also said it has reports that Serb police are pressing ethnic Albanians in Kosovo into "chain gangs."

Numerous refugees report that Serb police in Kosovo are forcing ethnic Albanian men to wear red jackets and work in grave-digging chain gangs, said Brig. Gen. Giuseppe Marani, a NATO military spokesman.

"The use of these men in red to dig graves is supported by imagery evidence, which has already identified 40 mass graves in Kosovo," Marani said, referring to NATO aerial reconnaissance photos.

The largely Muslim ethnic Albanians are burying their dead pointed toward Islam's holy city of Mecca, Marani said.

Serbian Americans hold protests over the NATO bombings

"Despite being forced to do this gruesome task, the Albanians are clearly trying to bury the victims of (Yugoslav President Slobodan) Milosevic with respect," Marani said.

He also said Kosovo men and boys are being used to mine coal for a power plant outside Pristina, the provincial capital.

Meanwhile, pockets of the ethnic Albanian rebels of the Kosovo Liberation Army continue to fight Yugoslav forces in the province.

The KLA "may control little terrain now, but it retains a capacity to harass Yugoslav forces," Shea said.

Yugoslav media say 3-year-old girl killed

The Yugoslav media on Sunday reported NATO strikes in a number of other areas.

Serbian television showed pictures of what it said was residential housing hit in Batajnica, 12 miles north of Belgrade, on Saturday night local time. The report said a number of people were wounded, including a 3-year-old girl.

But the commander of Yugoslav troops in Kosovo said Sunday that the attacks on his force have not been as effective as NATO reports.

"They managed to achieve only one thing. They committed an unbelievable crime against humanity, against whole population of Yugoslavia," said Yugoslav Gen. Vladimir Lazarevic, commander of the Yugoslav army corps at Pristina, Kosovo's capital.

NATO leaders still say no ground invasion

NATO leaders repeated Sunday that the bombing campaign would be effective without using allied ground troops.

NATO says these aerial photos show evidence of mass graves

German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder called the debate on ground troops "artificial" and said he believes the NATO airstrikes are starting to show an effect.

"There is no reason whatsoever to change (NATO's strategy)," he said. "We have jointly appointed a strategy, and it would take a joint momentum to change that decision."

NATO Secretary-General Javier Solana denied a report by a British newspaper that NATO is planning to send ground troops to Kosovo by May.

"We are going to continue with the same strategy, the strategy of the air campaign," Solana said on "Fox News Sunday."

Troops would be introduced only as peacekeepers, not as a combat force, he said -- a position restated by Shea, the secretary-general's spokesman.

"We still exclude that option for the simple reason that they would take many weeks, if not months, to assemble, to introduce into the area and to fight their way in," Shea said. "We simply don't have several weeks or months at our disposal."

More questions about convoy attack

NATO spokesmen continued to face tough questions from reporters about last week's attack on a convoy near Djakovica.

Yugoslav authorities said that several NATO attacks on civilian convoys killed as many as 85 ethnic Albanians last Wednesday.

A main border crossing into Albania was closed Sunday after a land mine killed five refugees nearby

NATO admitted that one of its pilots mistakenly dropped a bomb on a civilian vehicle near Djakovica. The alliance has fended off detailed questions about the incident, saying an investigation is continuing.

Adding to the confusion was a statement from the Pentagon on Saturday that NATO played an audiotape from a pilot not involved in the bombing of the civilian vehicle when it accepted blame for the incident.

Marani said NATO played the audiotape "to clarify what was the process, the procedure of a pilot involved in an action of that type."

NATO did not mean to imply that the pilot was involved in the hit on the civilian vehicle, he said.

NATO's commanding general, Wesley Clark, said Saturday that the truth may never be completely clear.

"I have sifted through the continuing reports of the incident and what happened that day. I am astonished by the fog (of confusion) and there's no way, without having been on the ground, to really determine what happened," Clark said.

Correspondents Ben Wedeman, Alessio Vinci and Brent Sadler contributed to this report.

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