At least 500 civilians died in 90 separate NATO bombing incidents in Yugoslavia during the Kosovo conflict, Human Rights Watch has found.
In a report published yesterday, the New York-based monitoring organisation said NATO committed violations of international humanitarian law by attacking "illegitimate or questionable targets" such as the Serbian television centre in Belgrade and seven bridges which had no military function.
It also criticised the use of cluster bombs, which it said were responsible for as many as 150 civilian deaths in the first six weeks of Operation Allied Force.
The death toll reported is more than three times greater than that admitted by NATO. However, it is much lower than that claimed by the Yugoslav government.
The Pentagon has suggested that only 20-30 incidents resulted in civilian deaths, while Yugoslavia has claimed that as many as 5,000 civilians were killed.
In compiling the report, Human Rights Watch visited 91 towns and villages in a three-week period last August, inspecting 42 sites where civilian deaths occurred.
The report reveals that US military commanders issued an order restricting attacks to evening and night-time hours after several daylight strikes on urban bridges resulted in civilian casualties. A subsequent order, issued in May, prohibited the US Air Force from using cluster bombs. British forces, however, continued to use the bombs until the conflict ended in June.
The report concludes that a third of incidents and more than half of deaths occurred as a result of attacks on illegitimate or questionable targets, some of which were poorly identified or mistaken, such as the Surdulica sanatorium and the Palic weather station.
It also found one third of incidents occurred in Kosovo, many of them attacks on mobile targets or military forces in the field.
Human Rights Watch said NATO governments should now establish an independent and impartial commission which would investigate the violations and recommend changes to targeting and bombing doctrine to ensure compliance with international humanitarian law.
Mr Kenneth Roth, executive director of the human rights body, said "all too often, NATO targeting subjected the civilian population to unacceptable risks." Restrictions on daylight attacks, prohibitions on the use of cluster bombs, greater care in attacking mobile targets and better identification of military targets could have reduced the level of civilian casualties, he said. Reuters adds: Responding to the report yesterday, NATO secretary general Lord George Robertson said it deserved to be taken seriously, but the alliance's actions, which were undertaken as a last resort to stop systematic killing of Albanians, could never be compared to Serb violence in Kosovo.
"I regret that NATO's action caused even a single civilian death, but these unintended incidents in no way compare to the systematic, unspeakable violence inflicted on civilians by Serb troops and paramilitary," he said in a statement issued in Brussels.
Yugoslav Defence Minister Mr Pavle Bulatovic was shot dead in a Belgrade restaurant yesterday, Studio B television reported, citing what it described as unofficial information.
Studio B said an unknown attacker or attackers opened fire through the restaurant window, hitting Mr Bulatovic and two other men sitting at the same table.
The killing comes less than a month after the murder of Serb warlord Arkan in the lobby of Belgrade's Intercontinental Hotel on January 15th.
