Silence for 756 Victims of NATO Bombings

The Humanitarian Law Center calls on citizens, university and high school students to mark March 24 with a moment of silence lasting 7+5+6 minutes, in memory of the 756 individuals who lost their lives during the 78 days of NATO bombing of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia in 1999.

A total of 756 people were killed in the NATO attacks: 451 civilians (217 Albanians, 204 Serbs, and 30 Roma and others), 276 members of the Yugoslav Army and the Ministry of Internal Affairs of the Republic of Serbia, and 29 members of the Kosovo Liberation Army.

The bombings claimed the lives of:

• 29 civilians in two attacks in Surdulica,
• 21 civilians in Belgrade,
• 14 civilians in Niš,
• 12 civilians in Aleksinac,
• 12 civilians in Varvarin,
• 12 civilians in the Grdelica Gorge, when a passenger train was hit.

In Kosovo, 44 civilians were killed in the village of Bistrazhin while moving in a column after being forced to leave their homes and head toward Albania. In the village of Korisha, 77 civilians lost their lives when NATO aircraft bombed a former military factory where a column of expelled villagers had taken shelter overnight on their way to the border. On a single day at Košare, NATO airstrikes killed 16 Yugoslav Army soldiers and 10 KLA fighters.