On Tuesday, Serbia will mark Remembrance Day for the victims of NATO air strikes, an operation which the 19 member states of that military alliance launched against former Yugoslavia and during which more than 9,000 people were killed or injured. 

Serbian Deputy Premier and Interior Minister Ivica Dacic said on Monday that the process of the unilateral proclamation of the secession of Kosovo and its recognition by certain states presents a continuation of the "bombardment, pressure and aggression" which NATO carried out against the FR Yugoslavia in 1999. 

Addressing, on behalf of the Serbian government, participants in a two-day international conference entitled "NATO Aggression against Serbia: Ten Years After" at Belgrade's Sava Center, Dacic pointed out that the air strikes on Serbia were carried out without a decision of the United Nations (UN) Security Council, that they present a violation of the UN Charter, the Paris Charter, the closing acts of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), as well as the elementary principles of international law. "The bombardment of Serbia was a consequence of a false accusation of genocide and ethnic cleansing, because of a stage-managed massacre, and the alleged guilt of the Serb forces in Racak," Dacic said. 

The bombardment of Serbia presented the closing stage of all the pressures put on Serbia since the beginning of the nineties of the 20th century, Dacic said. "It is similar today. Like at that time, it also happened today that the unilateral recognition of the indepedence of Kosovo and Metohija took place without a decision of the UN Security Council," Dacic said, pointing out that "the unilateral proclamation of secession and its recognition by certain states present a continuation of the bombardment, pressure and aggression that were in force at that time." On the grounds of the illegal manner of the air strikes, the lack of a UN Security Council decision, and the consequences of the bombardment for the Serbian people, the NATO aggression constituted a crime, Minister Dacic said.

During the 78 days of air strikes ironically called "Merciful Angel," a total of 1,002 members of the Yugoslav Army and Serbian police units and about 2,000 civilians, including 88 children, got killed, and another 6,000 people were slightly or severely wounded, while about 10 persons went missing and have not been traced to this very day. More than half of the victims of the NATO air raids were the ethnic Albanians in Kosovo in Metohija, although the Western allies claimed that their military intervention had been aimed at protecting those very same Albanians from an alleged humanitarian disaster. 

It was for the first time in history that a decision on attacks was reached without an approval of the UN Security Council, and it was then NATO secretary general Javier Solana that ordered the start of the allied forces' operation and conveyed the message to US General Wesley Clark on March 23, 1999. There is hardly a town in Serbia which was spared from the 11-week-long air strikes. NATO forces were deployed in 59 military basis on the territory of 12 countries, but the air strikes were mainly launched from four air-force basis in Italy and military ships in the Adriatic Ocean. Some of the operations were carried out by strategic aircrafts which flew from the military basis in Western Europe and the United States. 

During the 2,300 air strikes, a total of 995 buildings and other objects throughout the country were hit, and 1,150 combat aircrafts dropped approximately 420,000 bombs weighing a total of 22.000 tons. Not only did the North Atlantic Alliance use the most deadly weapons in its war against Serbia, but it also attacked our country with prohibited weaponry - ammunition incorporating depleted uranium. A large number of residential buildings were hit and many civilians got killed in towns in all parts of Serbia - Aleksinac, Kursumlja, Cuprija, Nis, Novi Sad, Murina, Valjevo, Surdulica. 

The targets were not only military institutions, but also the long lines of refugees in Kosovo, in Grdelicka Klisura gorge, a bridge in Varvarin, marketplace in Nis. Clinical Hospital Centre Dragisa Misovic and the Chinese Embassy in Belgrade were also hit during the air strikes, and about 10 civilians were killed on the occasion. During the bombing campaign, a total of 54 road infrastructure objects - 45 bridges, 25 railway bridges and 148 residential and business units - were destroyed, along with 300 schools, hospitals and state management buildings and 176 culture monuments that were ruined partly or completely.

More than 300 schools were damaged during the air strikes, and three of them were leveled to the ground. Dozens of hospitals, state management buildings, including the building of the Defence Ministry and the Serbian Interior Ministry in the centre of Belgrade suffered damage. Damage was inflicted upon 176 monuments of culture, including 23 Medieval monasteries and a large number of churches across Serbia, as well as several mosques and Islamic culture institutions in Djakovica, Pec, Prizren. According to the estimates of experts, the material damage that was caused during the bombing is estimated to be somewhere between 30 and 100 billion dollars, depending on the methodology.