Monuments Evoke Tragic Memories of NATO Bombing of Yugoslavia

There are memorials across Serbia and Kosovo to commemorate hundreds of people who died during NATO's 78-day bombing campaign against Yugoslavia, which began on March 24, 1999 and is being marked with an official commemoration in Belgrade on Wednesday evening.

Some of them are huge monuments, like the 'Eternal Flame' column in the Serbian capital; others are much more modest, like the engraved stone slab in the Kosovo village of Bishtazhin commemorating 41 ethnic Albanians who were mistakenly killed by a NATO air strike.

The Western military alliance launched its air strikes in an attempt to force Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic to accept the terms of an agreement to end his military campaign against the Kosovo Liberation Army, which involved widespread ethnic cleansing. But as the bombing continued, Milosevic's army and police force intensified their war and committed a series of massacres of ethnic Albanian civilians.

The Serbian government estimates that at least 2,500 people died and 12,500 were injured during the NATO campaign, although the exact death toll remains unclear. The air strikes ended on June 10, 1999 after Milosevic agreed to withdraw his forces from Kosovo. He was ousted in an uprising the following year and sent to the UN war crimes tribunal in The Hague.

The 'Eternal Flame' monument commemorating victims of the NATO bombing was installed in June 2000 in Friendship Park in New Belgrade on the initiative of Mirjana Markovic, the wife of Slobodan Milosevic. Photo: EPA/KOCA SULEJMANOVIC.

A monument in Tasmajdan Park in Belgrade to child victims of the NATO attacks, with the bronze figure of three-year-old Milica Rakic, who died in April 1999 during the bombing. Photo: BIRN.

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