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- NATO warplanes hammer Serb targets in Kosovo and Yugoslavia says one of the strikes hits a convoy of ethnic Albanian refugees under Serb police escort, killing at least 64 people and wounding 20.
- NATO confirms its aircraft carried out attacks on Yugoslav military vehicles, but says it has no reports that they caused civilian casualties.
- Pentagon spokesman Kenneth Bacon says NATO is still investigating, but NATO pilots reported hitting only military vehicles, not civilians. He says Serb forces escorting the refugee convoy may have attacked and killed some of the civilians after military vehicles in the convoy were hit.
- Earlier, Bacon cited reports from U.N. relief workers who said refugees entering Albania claimed refugee convoys were attacked by Yugoslav planes and helicopters.
- Video taken under Serb control shows smashed bodies scattered along a roadway, damaged farm vehicles and bombed-out farm buildings. People, some with blood streaming down their faces, load bodies of the dead and wounded into trunks of cars or wheelbarrows to transport them.
- President Clinton is expected to call up thousands of military reserves to support a major buildup of NATO air power. Bacon says "several thousand'' reservists likely will be ordered to active duty.
- On Albania's border with Yugoslavia, Serb forces shell a deserted Albanian village they had briefly seized a day earlier.
- In Belgrade, a rare daytime air-raid alert sounds at mid-morning while jets were heard flying overhead. Daytime alerts also sound briefly in the Montenegrin capital, Podgorica.
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- NATO acknowledges mistakenly bombing a refugee convoy, but blames the Serbs for putting the refugees in harm's way. Yugoslav officials said 75 people died and more than two dozen were hurt in Wednesday's attack.
- NATO strikes Yugoslav military barracks, including in the suburbs of Belgrade, along with transmitters carrying state-run TV and a series of bridges. New NATO attacks also are reported in and around Kosovo.
- Thousands of Kosovar Albanians chased by Serb artillery fire pour into neighboring Albania and Macedonia. Along the tense Albania-Yugoslav border, international observers report a new round of Serb shelling.
- In Washington, Defense Secretary William Cohen says the Kosovo conflict may stretch into summer and American casualties are likely.
- Russia welcomes a German proposal offering a 24-hour halt to NATO airstrikes if Yugoslav forces withdraw from Kosovo.
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- Government officials said the Pentagon is preparing to seek authority to activate as many as 33,000 reserve forces in support of the Kosovo conflict, and the request is likely to be approved.
- NATO aircraft knock out several tanks and artillery sites in Kosovo and hit key sites around Belgrade. NATO also struck military targets in the Yugoslav republic of Montenegro.
- Refugees arriving from Kosovo reported a greatly intensified push by Serb forces to empty entire communities of ethnic Albanians.
- The Russian parliament urged President Boris N. Yeltsin to include Yugoslavia in a Slavic union with Russia and Balarus.
- NATO again acknowledged accidentally hitting a civilian vehicle in Kosovo Wednesday, but said it can't account for the apparent bombing deaths of other civilians in the same area. Serbs said at least 75 people died in another NATO strike on a refugee convoy the same day.
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- NATO commander Wesley Clark told Yugoxlav Prsident Slobodan Milosevic that he cannot win his war with the alliance. For their part, Yugoslav officials said the West will pay a steep price if lives in Yugoslavia is invaded by ground troops. A Yugoslav general said his nation was "preparing for an all-out war."
- NATO said about 3,200 ethnic Albanians have been slain by Serbs in Kosovo in the past several weeks. The figure was based an refugee accounts and could not be verified. Officials said evidence is mounting of atrocities against refugees fleeing Kosovo.
- Serb forces appeared to be making a final push to empty Kosovo of ethnic Albanians. Some 25,000 refugees arrived in Albania and Macedonia after fleeing their homes.
- Recruits from ethnic Albanians living abroad were heading toward Albania to help the rebel Kosovo Liberation Army.
- Source: Wire, staff reports
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DIPLOMACY:
General Henry H. Shelton, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, testified before the Senate Armed Sevices Committee, saying that the air war could fail to stop the Serbs.
- Secretary of Defense William S. Cohen told senators that the conflict could stretch in the summer and that American casualties are likely.
- President Clinton said the deaths Wednesday of refugees mistakenly bombed by NATO aircraft were "inevitable in a conflict of this kind,' and warned that "if anybody thinks this is a reason for changing our mission, the the United States will never be able to bring military power to bear again."
- Russia welcomed a German proposal offering a 24-hour halt to NATO strikes if Yugoslav forces withdraw from Kosovo.
COMBAT:
- NATO acknowledged mistakenly bombing a refugee convoy, but blamed the Serbs for putting the refugees in harm's way. Yugoslav officials said 75 people died and more than two dozen were hurt in Wednesday's attack.
- NATO struck Yugoslav military barracks, some in the suburbs of Belgrade; transmitters carrying state-run TV; and a series of bridges. New NATO attacks also were reported in and around Kosovo and in Montenegro.
REFUGEES:
- Thousands of Kosovar Albanians chased by Serb artillery fire poured.
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- President Boris Yeltsin said Russia would not allow the West to control Yugoslavia but, in a sign of a compromise with NATO, vowed no more Russian warships would sail to the Adriatic Sea.
- Yeltsin told U.S. President Bill Clinton in a telephone call that he would not allow Russia to be drawn into the Kosovo conflict, the White House said.
- NATO said its warplanes might have hit civilian vehicles and caused civilian casualties in disputed attacks in Kosovo last week.
- NATO studied whether to use force to stop oil shipments to Yugoslavia while President Clinton prepared to ask the U.S. Congress for about $6 billion to pay for more air strikes and humanitarian aid.
- British Prime Minister Tony Blair vowed to drive Belgrade's forces out and return the Serbian-ruled province to ``the people to whom it belongs.''
- The United Nations refugee agency, the UNHCR, said Yugoslav forces appeared to be turning back ethnic Albanians trying to leave the country.
- Source: Reuters
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- Serb and Albanian troops exchanged gunfire across the northern Albanian border with Kosovo, international monitors reported. It was the first time Albanian soldiers had responded to Serb fire.
- Croatia said Belgrade sent up to 300 soldiers into a disputed demilitarised zone monitored by the United Nations bordering Yugoslavia's Montenegro republic. Croatia protested to the U.N. Security Council which ordered an investigation.
- The United States said NATO leaders would agree to increase political, economic and military pressure on Yugoslavia at a 50th anniversary summit of the alliance in Washington on Friday.
- The United States said an oil embargo on Yugoslavia was being considered.
- British Prime Minister Tony Blair admitted NATO was powerless to help 850,000 ethnic Albanians in Kosovo the alliance says have been driven from their homes.
- Russia stepped up efforts to negotiate an end to the Yugoslav crisis, sending a special envoy to three ex-Soviet states -- Georgia, Ukraine and Azerbaijan -- as the head of the Russian Orthodox Church tried to mediate in Belgrade.
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