2024-04-23 07:39:07
Around 1,300 people were evacuated this Sunday to allow the removal of a bomb dropped by NATO in 1999 in Nis, in southeastern Serbia, said an Interior Ministry source.
The one-ton bomb, which did not explode, was removed from a construction site.
“It is being transported to a safe place to be destroyed”, Luka Causic, from the Ministry of the Interior, told journalists, noting that the deactivation of the bomb was supported by the police, firefighters and a medical team.
The MK84 bomb had an explosive charge of 430 kg, according to Causic.
Intended to end Serbian leader Slobodan Milosevic’s repression against Albanian separatists in Kosovo, NATO bombings of Serbia lasted 78 days in the spring of 1999.
On May 7, 1999, at least 15 people died when NATO planes dropped cluster bombs on an open-air market in Nis.
The bombing was later described as a mistake.
Serbia’s third city was bombed again five days later on May 12, resulting in the deaths of 11 civilians.
The conflict in Kosovo, marked by atrocities and a campaign of ethnic cleansing orchestrated from Belgrade, is the last bloody chapter in the dismantling of the former Yugoslavia.
It left more than 13,000 dead, mainly Albanians, and hundreds of thousands displaced.
According to a report by the non-governmental organization Human Rights Watch published in 2000, around 500 civilians, Serbs and Kosovo Albanians, were killed in NATO attacks.
2024-04-23 07:39:07