The NATO attack on Yugoslavia began on Wednesday, March 24, just before 8:00 p.m., sending residents across the country scrambling to their basements and into bomb shelters built during the Cold War. The air raids generated scenes of solidarity in Belgrade, the Yugoslav capital, where neighbors helped the aged and women with children into the shelters.

The first raid began as warning sirens wailed and local TV and radio stations advised people to avoid panic and to prepare necessary personal items. The attacks led the Yugoslav government to move from a state of war-readiness to a declaration of a full state of war. Police in Belgrade took up protective positions at key public buildings. Local residents in the capital responded calmly, although fear was clearly visible on the faces of mothers with small children and among the frail elderly.

A resident of central Belgrade carries her 9-month-old son in the basement of her apartment building as U.S. and British missile attacks continued through the night. She and her son joined about 20 others sitting on wooden planks in an unheated room lit by a single lightbulb.

Explosions were heard around Belgrade, although the bombs landed away from the center of the city, some striking a military air base. The first attacks were made by unmanned drone rockets. At the air base, characteristic sounds of U.S.-made Cruise missiles, modeled after Nazi Germany's V1 and V2 rockets, were heard just before explosions on impact.

A 60-second all-clear siren sounded shortly before midnight Wednesday, about three and a half hours after the first alarm. People returned to their homes, but few had any sleep because a second aerial bombardment began less than an hour later, before 1:00 a.m., continuing until 4:00 a.m. Surprisingly, there was no anti-aircraft fire to been seen in the skies despite the visible explosions of incoming missiles on the outskirts of Belgrade.

Speaking in Brussels, North Atlantic Treaty Organization officials said the rockets were targeted only at military sites. Yugoslav television reported that the NATO bombs had struck in the north of the country: destroying a police academy building in Novi Sad, the capital of Serbia's northern province of Vojvodina; hitting the main military airfield outside Belgrade; and striking a factory in Pancevo across the Danube from Belgrade. Damage was also reported at defense facilities near Pristina, the capital of the southerly Serbian province of Kosovo and near Podgorica, the capital of Montenegro, the other republic in the Yugoslav federation. Montenegro, which provides Yugoslavia with its access to the Adriatic Sea, also suffered attacks at radar sites and defense posts along its coastline. In central Serbia, bombs fell in Kragujevac at a factory of the Zastava company that produces defence equipment as well as the domestic YUGO-brand cars and trucks.

Government sources here in Yugoslavia said that at least ten people died in the first night of bombing and that at 38 were injured. The dead were reported to include at least one family killed by a missile that struck a home near a security facility. Domestic television has been showing images of people being treated in hospitals. Public and private television stations carried government announcements that the country would never accept the military occupation of Serbia's province of Kosovo by foreign troops. Discussion panels and independent commentators are unanimous in support of the government's rejection of the U.S.-drafted plan to deploy NATO troops on Yugoslav territory.

Any questions about this report may be sent directly by e-mail to our correspondent, John Bosnitch, who is now on assignment in Yugoslavia. His e-mail address is: bosnitch@imcnews.com We appreciate your comments and suggestions.