Air strikes begin as Blair says `We must end vile oppression'

THE FIRST Nato bombs and cruise missiles smashed into targets across Yugoslavia last night as the Western alliance, after months of threats, launched its first attack on a sovereign state to force President Slobodan Milosevic to accept a peace settlement in Kosovo.

Barely an hour after dozens of planes left Aviano base in north Italy, sirens wailed as four "huge" explosions were heard in Kosovo's capital, Pristina, and the city was plunged into darkness. At least eight explosions were reported in the Yugoslav capital, Belgrade, some near the military airport at Batajnica.

Other targets included an early-warning and missile defence site at Mount Rumija, on the Adriatic, and Montenegro's airport at Podgorica, which was ablaze last night. Air surveillance facilities at Kopanik, south-west Serbia, were also high on the list. So were missile and radar sites pinpointed by Nato undercover special forces on the ground in Yugoslavia.

In Brussels, Javier Solana, Nato's secretary-general, confirmed that the attacks - inevitable after Mr Milosevic rejected the peace deal and stepped up his onslaught against the ethnic Albanian majority in the province - had begun. Minutes later President Bill Clinton went on television to warn the world that if the Nato did not act now, the "full-blown" Kosovo crisis would get worse. The offensive was "not risk- free," Mr Clinton told Americans. "It carries risks. But the dangers of acting now are outweighed by risks of failing to act." The strikes had three objectives: to show the alliance's resolve, to deter Mr Milosevic from escalating his attacks, and "if necessary, to damage Serbia's capacity to wage war."

In Berlin, Tony Blair said "we are taking this action for one very simple reason ... to stop Milosevic continuing his vile oppression against the Kosovan people."

In London earlier, George Robertson, Secretary of State for Defence, said the attacks would have "forensic" accuracy, but analysts said some civilian casualties were all but certain. British officials admitted Yugoslavia's defences, the most effective in the Balkans, might bring down some aircraft.

A diplomatic flurry continued almost to the last, including a phone consultation between Presidents Clinton and Boris Yeltsin. Russia, like China, opposes the strikes. But the die had by then long been cast, with the firepower of 400 planes and a dozen warships assembled around the Adriatic about to be unleashed.

In Berlin, where a crucial European summit had been hijacked by the Kosovo showdown, the 15 EU leaders said that "on the threshold of the 21st century, Europe could not tolerate a humanitarian catastrophe in its midst." In vain, they appealed to Mr Milosevic, even as the final hours ticked away, to change his mind. "A simple telephone call is all that's needed. Even now the military action could be called off," Joschka Fisher, the German Foreign Minister, said. But the call never came.

Instead, the Belgrade authorities shut down the independent B92 radio station, and confiscated vital satellite broadcasting equipment from foreign television networks. Then the Yugoslav president went on television to urge Serbs to resist "by all means" the impending attack. "What is at stake here is the freedom of the entire country; Kosovo was only the door intended to allow foreign troops to come in."

The best service ordinary people could render was to go about their business as usual, Mr Milosevic said. But in Belgrade, business was anything but usual as the realisation sank in that, this time, air strikes were a certainty. Long queues formed at petrol stations and panic buying was reported at many shops. The media published instructions from the city council on food and other necessities to take to air-raid shelters, and on how to signal to rescuers from beneath the rubble of destroyed buildings. "Be calm, do not panic, but be decisive," was the official mantra of the hour.

In Kosovo, where the latest month-old Serb offensive has driven 65,000 people from their homes, the violence and the misery continued. As civilian and Kosovo Liberation Army guerrillas alike waited for deliverance by Nato air power, Serb tanks kept up a two-hour artillery barrage at Blace, close to the border with Macedonia, setting houses ablaze in several nearby villages.

Indeed, among neighbouring countries, nowhere were apprehensions greater than in Macedonia, with its large ethnic Albanian minority, and where 12,000 Nato troops are already assembled, part of a peacekeeping force that now may never reach Kosovo.

The fear was that once the bombing started, the powerful Yugoslav forces currently bombarding the Kosovo Liberation Army just across the border could a launch a retaliatory artillery attack against the Nato units of their own. Macedonia is especially likely to be destabilised by fighting and a further influx of refugees. Although its borders with Kosovo are still open, the Prime Minister, Ljubco Georgievski, has placed the country's meagre armed forces on full alert, and stressed that Macedonian territory would not be used as springboard for an allied assault on Kosovo.

In Albania, also bracing for thousands of new refugees, more troops were despatched to its poor and rugged northern frontier region, where rudimentary shelters are being prepared in the event of Yugoslav cross-border reprisals. Even in Italy air defence batteries were moved to the south-east coast in anticipation of possible attacks on the US warships offshore.

In the worst case, Greece and Turkey could be dragged in: "The fire in Kosovo could engulf the whole Balkans," the Turkish Prime Minister, Bulent Ecevit, said. A sentiment on which both Mr Clinton and the official Tanjug news agency agreed. Nato had taken an "irrational" decision which might have "tragic consequences for the entire region," Tanjug said.