13 minutes agoHundreds of billion losses in economics and military and civilian damage that Yugoslavia suffered from bombing
Periskopi(7 years ago)
(7 years ago)Today marks the 20th anniversary of the start of NATO bombings on Yugoslavia's military targets, marking the beginning of freedom for Kosovo society. But although NATO bombings brought a political situation so much desired for the country, all of this did not go without consequences, even among the Albanians here, [...]
Today marks the 20th anniversary of the start of NATO bombings on Yugoslavia's military targets, marking the beginning of freedom for Kosovo society.
But, although NATO bombings brought a political situation so much desired for the country, all of this did not go without consequences, even among the Albanians here, writes Periscopi.
Human Rights Watch had concluded “that the number of Yugoslav civilians killed was between 489 and 528 in ninety incidents separated from this operation”. There were refugees among them. 60 percent of deaths occurred in Kosovo, while 40 percent in Serbia.
As far as military destructions were concerned, the damage was significant on the Yugoslav side. As for NATO, they were limited. According to official reports, Periscopi notes, the alliance did not have any fatality from the operations we are talking about. On May 5, however, an American Apache crashed and exploded on a night mission in Albania. The Yugoslavs had claimed to have shot him down, but NATO said there has been a technical defect. David Gibbs and Kevin Reychert had died from this. Then, three American soldiers were taken as prisoners of war by Yugoslav special forces on the border between Macedonia and Kosovo.
After a study turned out that Yugoslavia's air defence forces had fired over 700 NATO missiles. Despite this, only two planes had crashed.
In 2013 the then minister and current president of Serbia, Alexander Vuciq, had announced that the Yugoslav Army and police had lost 956 people and 52 others had disappeared. In early June 1999, NATO officials had claimed that over 5 thousand Yugoslav troops had been killed but later corrected that statement, saying the number was 1200.
Economic damage, according to Yugoslavia officials, is said to have reached up to 100 billion dollars.
In 2006, one study found that the number of losses for the Yugoslav state had been 29 billion and 600 million dollars in losses. /Periscopi
