Also Thursday, Yugoslavia said more than 1,200 people have been killed and 5,000 hurt by NATO airstrikes, the U.N.'s top human rights official reported after being snubbed by Yugoslav leader Slobodan Milosevic. Yugoslav Foreign Minister Zivadin Jovanovic told the United Nations on April 24 that about 1,000 people had been killed and thousands hurt. Western officials reacted skeptically to scenes of soldiers in berets and camouflage uniforms leaving Merdare, saying there was no evidence so far of a large-scale pullout with heavy weaponry and that Milosevic's forces often are rotated in and out of Kosovo. I don't see any evidence of a big troop pullout. For this to happen, the Serb forces must leave.
Partial withdrawals can only mean continued civil war.
NATO has stepped up bombing raids on the some 40,000 Serb troops and military police deployed in Kosovo, part of Yugoslavia's dominant Serb republic. The Tanjug state news agency reported new NATO airstrikes Thursday morning in the province. The alliance said it is now able to concentrate fire on Milosevic's forces in Kosovo, where they began their crackdown in February 1998 - 13 months before NATO intervened after repeated reports of atrocities and mass killings. NATO, however, has not returned to bomb any targets in downtown Belgrade since Friday night's mistaken hit on the Chinese Embassy that killed three journalists, but Maj. Gen. Charles Wald, a U.S. military planner, said the alliance has not sworn off the area.