KOSOVO: NATO AIRSTRIKES ON CAPITAL PRISTINA LATEST

(25 Mar 1999) Natural Sound
The Kosovo capital of Pristina took several heavy blows from NATO forces on Wednesday night.
And wailing air-raid sirens again cleared the streets of Pristina by early afternoon on Thursday.
Residents braced themselves for more NATO air assaults and possible retaliation attacks by angry Serbs.
Yugoslavia defiantly absorbed its first night of punishment from NATO air power.
It claims ten people were killed and thirty eight wounded overnight in an aerial barrage intended to force President Slobodan Milosevic to make peace in Kosovo.
The army reiterated its defiance after a night of strikes on more than 50 targets, saying the "high morale of the units was preserved."
But for the ordinary residents of Pristina, there was little they could do as bombs rained down from the sky.
Some merely looked out from their balconies at the air assault around them, then retreated inside.
NATO's most spectacular hit was a heavy strike around midnight on an industrial plant to the southwest of the city, beside the main military barracks.
General Guthrie, NATO spokesman said the British vessel HMS Splendid fired its first Tomahawk missile against a key military radar facility located near Pristina airfield.
He said this facility housed two highly capable air defence radars and an associated control building.
It was reportedly capable of providing extensive data to Yugoslavian air defence forces, fighter aircraft, surface to air missile units and anti-aircraft artillery.
Some two dozen journalists were arrested as they tried to watch the assault from the roof of a Belgrade hotel.
All but one were eventually released.
In the cold light of day, soldiers surveyed the scenes of destruction in the city.
Power was restored to parts of blacked-out Pristina at dawn but water supplies were intermittent.
The normally bustling streets of the Kosovo capital were eerily quiet.
Air raid sirens again blared on Thursday and the state news agency reported more fighting in Kosovo.
General Wesley Clark, the NATO supreme commander, said that the allied operation "will be just as long and difficult as President Milosevic wants it to be."

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