Serbian TV reports the southern city of Nis was hit RELATED VIDEO Gen. Leaf describes Wednesday's NATO attacks on conveys and explains how civilians may have been hit, as CNN's Bill Hemmer reports (April 19) Real 28K 80K Windows Media 28K 80K CNN's Margaret Lowrie reports on the reaction British officials are receiving from ethnic Albanians in London (April 19) Real 28K 80K Windows Media 28K 80K Yugoslav officials continue to say the exodus of refugees is being caused by NATO's aggression, not Belgrade's army. CNN's Alessio Vinci is there. (April 19) Real 28K 80K Windows Media 28K 80K To view the latest video streams on the strikes in Yugoslavia, use the arrow buttons below to scroll through the video gallery.        Windows Media Real        28 K 80 K IMAGE GALLERY: The Kosovo refugees Protesting the NATO strikes Devastation of the Kosovo capital The Serbs and Kosovo  ALSO Sources: U.S. suspects Russia feeding info to Belgrade Two Americans identified as victims in fatal Albania crash  MESSAGE BOARD Crisis in Kosovo  MAPS NATO officials describe the air campaign

April 20, 1999
Web posted at: 5:57 a.m. EDT (0957 GMT)

BELGRADE, Yugoslavia (CNN) -- NATO launched intense overnight air raids on targets across Yugoslavia, Serbian television reported Tuesday, while U.S. officials said paratroopers from the U.S. 82nd Airborne were being deployed to Albania Tuesday to protect a fleet of 24 Apache tank-killing helicopters en route to the Balkans.

NATO spokesman Jamie Shea said there are "increasing reports" that the Yugoslav Army has created "an anti-humanitarian corridor" in northern Kosovo by "funneling 150,000 refugees" toward the provincial capital of Pristina to be "put on trains and sent south to Macedonia."

"This suggests that this is not random but is being done on an almost scientific and systematic basis," Shea said.

The remarks came as NATO's campaign against Yugoslavia continued. Serbian television said a satellite ground station in Prilike, about 80 miles (130 km) south of Belgrade near the central Serb town of Ivanjica, was damaged.

Serbian TV said one person was killed in overnight raids late Monday and early Tuesday, and 11 others were injured in a strike on Nis, a city about 125 miles (200 km) southeast of Belgrade that has come under heavy attack in Operation Allied Force. A tobacco industry plant suffered heavy damage there, and residential buildings and a factory warehouse were hit, Serb TV said.

Four people were wounded in Nova Varos, about 150 miles (240 km) southwest of Belgrade, near a major rail linking Belgrade and the Montenegran port city of Bar, Serbian TV said. A bridge on the same rail line was attacked last week.

There was a report of an attack on Mount Zlatibor near the town of Uzice, about 75 miles (121 km) southwest of Belgrade.

Strong detonations also were reported in the Batajnica suburb of Belgrade, Kragujevac, about 60 miles (100 km) southeast of Belgrade, and Gornji Milanovac, about 55 miles (88 km) south of the Yugoslav capital.

Explosions jolted Pristina and a village to the north of the Kosovo capital. Serb TV said the factory Krusik, a repeated target in Valjevo, was hit again. It showed video of an explosion and damaged residential buildings.

Serb TV said the town of Kursumlija, 150 miles (250 km) south of Belgrade, was also attacked. It said the central town of Kraljevo, 75 miles (120 km) south of Belgrade was targeted. The town of Sites Novi Pazar, 110 miles (176 km) south of Belgrade was reportedly heavily damaged.

On the diplomatic front, President Clinton and Russian President Boris Yeltsin spoke by phone Monday in what U.S. sources described as a constructive conversation, although it did not represent a breakthrough in relations between the two countries.

Next week, U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan will travel to Moscow to discuss the Kosovo conflict with Russian officials, he said.

During the Clinton-Yeltsin phone call, a senior White House official familiar with the conversation said Yeltsin reaffimed that Moscow would not get involved militarily in the Kosovo conflict -- and U.S. sources said the administration has been assured Russia will not follow through on talk of sending warships into the Adriatic Sea.

The official also said Yeltsin told Clinton that NATO should stop the strikes and, if that were to happen, Russia would then press Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic to withdraw his troops from Kosovo, allow the refugeees to return and accept an international security force.

But Clinton restated the U.S. view that the strikes will not stop until Milosevic accepts NATO's terms.

Clinton also sought $6 billion in emergency spending to beef up operations against Yugoslavia through September. "The need for this funding is urgent, immediate, clearly in the national interest," Clinton said. "There are literally lives hanging in the balance."

House Speaker Dennis Hastert (R-Illinois) called U.S. defense capabilities "grossly inadequate" and said the emergency spending measure for Kosovo should include money for "broader military needs."

In an interview with CNN, Sen. John McCain (R-Arizona) said he was planning to introduce a resolution that would "authorize the president to use what force necessary in order to bring this war, or this conflict, to an early conclusion."

CNN also learned that Rep. Jim Saxton (R-New Jersey), a senior member of the House National Security Committee, was in Belgrade on what he called a "fact-finding" mission. He said he was meeting with Yugoslav government officials and being taken to civilian areas said to be damaged by NATO airstrikes.

He would not comment on details of his meetings with Belgrade officials.

In other developments, in the most complete explanation to date, a U.S. Air Force general told reporters in Brussels that NATO had probably struck civilian vehicles and killed civilians in two attacks against what pilots believed were military targets on April 14.

The U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees said it appeared Yugoslavia had closed border checkpoints, leaving thousands of fleeing Kosovar Albanians trapped inside.

In recent days, thousands of refugees crossed borders, but this morning the flow of Kosovar Albanians into neighboring nations "grinded down to a trickle," said UNHCR spokeswoman Jennifer Dean.

In the United States, Army officials said 700 paratroopers from the 82nd Airborne were being deployed from Fort Bragg, North Carolina, to the Albanian capital Tirana to protect the Army Apache tank-killing helicopters, 24 of which were expected to arrive Tuesday if the weather holds.

In addition to the paratroopers, 2300 support personel were deployed to accompany the Apache helicopters.

Some of the 82nd Airborne were already in Tirana, but others were still in the process of leaving Fort Bragg, officials said. In addition, officials said, another 150 troops might be sent later.

Earlier, NATO officials said there appeared to be renewed fighting by the Yugoslav Army in western Kosovo against the Kosovo Liberation Army as well as in the northern part of the region.

Shea said that the seven KLA headquarters in Kosovo had been dismantled and the organization appeared to have changed into a guerrilla operation "which is still able to harass" the Yugoslav Army.

He said NATO was seeing troop movements across Kosovo toward the southwest to fight the KLA and that 8,000 additional Yugoslav troops had been sent to the region to join the 40,000 already deployed there.

Asked about reports that petroleum shipments were reaching Yugoslavia through the port in Montenegro and via pipeline from Bulgaria, Shea said 70 percent of the Yugoslav Army's petroleum supplies had been destroyed, but said NATO is "aware" that some fuel supplies are reaching Yugoslavia and was planning action to cut those off "within the scope of our current operations."

State Department spokesman James Rubin said that the NATO allies were consulting on how to cut off imported petroleum suppliesto Yugoslavia. He said how that would be done had not yet been decided.

On the accidental hit of possible refugee vehicles last week, U.S. Air Force Brigadier Gen. Daniel Leaf said that two targets were hit with nine laser guided bombs near Djakovica on April 14. Yugoslavia has charged the attacks killed as many as 85 ethnic Albanian refugees.

Leaf said the pilots believed in both cases they were bombing military targets, but admitted, "it is possible there were civilian casualties at both locations."

At a crescent shaped building north of Djakovica, a vehicle was hit, he said, after it appeared to be involved in the burning of houses. At a second location southeast of Djakovica "lead elements" of a convoy of more than 100 vehicles was hit because pilots said the vehicles appeared to be military and an AWACs plane advised them that the convoy was military.

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