DISINFO: 1999 NATO bombings of Yugoslavia killed thousands
SUMMARY
The NATO bombing of Yugoslavia which began on 24 March 1999 and ended on 10 June of the same year, according to sources, killed up to 2,500 people in the country. The official pretext for the launch of the operation was the protection of the Kosovo’s Albanian population “against ethnic cleansing and the humanitarian catastrophe”. Thus, the West reacted to the Serbian police and army operations to crush the resistance of the Kosovo Liberation Army, which is considered to be a terrorist in Serbia. Albanian terrorists committed their first attacks against Serbian civilians and policemen in Kosovo in 1996.
RESPONSE
Recurring pro-Kremlin disinformation about the number of civilian casualties of NATO bombing, debunked by Polygraph three years ago. The primary purpose of the campaign was to end violence and repression and force Milosevic to withdraw his military, police and para-military forces from Kosovo. (See NATO statement from 1999.) Since the start of 1998, until the end of 2000, 13,500 persons lost their lives in clashes in Kosovo, out of which approximately 10,800 Albanians, 2,200 Serbian and around 500 Roma and other non-Albanians. United Nations International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia exhumated mass graves of Kosovo Albanians discovered on the territory of Serbia proper, for which almost no one has been indicted before domestic courts.