In the course of the campaign, NATO launched 2,300 missiles at 990 targets and dropped 14,000 bombs.

Over 2,000 civilians were killed, including 88 children, and thousands more were injured. Over 200,000 ethnic Serbs were forced to leave their homeland in Kosovo. Airstrikes destroyed more than 300 schools, libraries, and over 20 hospitals. At least 40,000 homes were either completely eliminated or damaged and about 90 historic and architectural monuments were ruined.

The NATO bombing of Yugoslavia was NATO’s military operation against the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia during the Kosovo War. The strikes lasted from March 24, 1999 to June 10, 1999. The official NATO operation code name was Operation Allied Force; the United States called it Operation Noble Anvil, while in Yugoslavia the operation was named “Merciful Angel”.

Military casualties on the NATO side were limited. According to official reports, the alliance suffered no fatalities from combat operations.

There has also been criticism of the campaign. Joseph Farah accused the coalition of exaggerating the casualty numbers to make a claim of potential genocide to justify the bombings. United States President Clinton and his administration, were accused of inflating the number of Kosovar Albanians killed by Serbians.

In an interview with Radio-Television Serbia journalist Danilo Mandic on April 25, 2006, Noam Chomsky alleged that Strobe Talbott, the Deputy Secretary of State under Clinton and the leading U.S. negotiator during the war, later denied in John Norris’ 2005 book Collision Course: NATO, Russia, and Kosovo that “the plight of the Kosovar Albanians” was the driving force behind the campaign, claiming the real reason to be “Yugoslavia’s resistance to … [the] political and economic reform” that had been driving forward the liberalisation and deregulation of markets throughout the region.

On April 29, 1999, Yugoslavia filed a complaint at the International Court of Justice (ICJ) at The Hague against ten NATO member countries (Belgium, Germany, France, United Kingdom, Italy, Canada, the Netherlands, Portugal, Spain, and the United States) and alleged that the military operation had violated Article 9 of the 1948 Genocide Convention and that Yugoslavia had jurisdiction to sue through Article 38, para. 5 of Rules of Court.

Amnesty International released a report which stated that NATO forces had deliberately targeted a civilian object (NATO bombing of the Radio Television of Serbia headquarters), and had bombed targets at which civilians were certain to be killed.The report was rejected by NATO as “baseless and ill-founded”.

Marking 15 years since the NATO invasion of Yugoslavia, RT will air “Zashto?” (“Why?”), an exclusive documentary film produced by the channel’s journalists. Serbian Jelena Milincic and American Anissa Naouai talk to witnesses of the tragic events of 1999. The bombings of present-day Serbia were part of Operation Allied Force, which lasted 78 days and resulted in more than 2,000 civilian casualties, including 88 children. “Zashto?” premieres on RT International on March 24:

[Source: Wikipedia]