Serb media said yesterday that NATO bombs killed 17 people, including children, on a bus in Kosovo, a claim that NATO sources in Brussels said looked like a deliberate distortion.
The claim and counter-claim came as crews worked throughout Yugoslavia to fix the electric power grid after over-night bombings blacked out 70 per cent of Serbia.
Serb reports said a NATO bomb hit the bus in Kosovo, killing at least 17 people in the vehicle packed with women and children near the western city of Pec. NATO admitted to hitting another bus in Kosovo on Saturday in which Serb media said 39 people were killed.
Local reporters said the latest bus to come under fire was on a regular trip between Pec and Montenegro when it was hit at about noon in the village of Savine Vode.
An investigating judge said the area near the bus "was bombed for at least two hours", hampering rescue efforts.
Reporters noticed toys and other children's belongings scattered in the wreckage and were told at the medical centre in Pec that children made up the majority of the patients admitted. A doctor said many were suffering second and third degree burns of the legs, arms and back.
NATO sources in Brussels said its warplanes may have hit a police convoy or a mixed convoy with refugees or human shields. A source said it was unlikely Yugoslav would admit to military casualties.
As evening fell in Belgrade, residents reported about 20 per cent of the city had electricity. The lights went out in Serbia on Sunday night when a new kind of NATO bomb, using graphite to short-circuit the electricity system, bombarded Belgrade.
NATO said its intention is to sever the network of communications between President Milosevic and his troops. The NATO air attacks also severed 70 per cent of all communications and power for civilians throughout Serbia.
Confident that hospitals have back-up generators for emergency use, NATO said it has changed its strategy slightly to turn electricity into "nothing more than metal, wire and plastic" but cause little damage to the structures.
The NATO spokesman, Mr Jamie Shea, said: "We aimed to shut down their [the Yugoslav army] computers and disrupt and complicate their lives. It ties them down. They have to spend more time mending things and have less energy for creating mayhem with the lives of the Kosovans."
"We now have our finger on the light switch in Yugoslavia and can turn it off whenever we need to and whenever we want to," he said. "We realise the inconvenience that may be caused to the Yugoslav people but its up to Milosevic to decide how he wishes to use his remaining energy sources - on his tanks - or on his people."
"And we will continue to attack until Belgrade accepts the demands of the international community. Belgrade must stop the killing; it must withdraw its forces from Kosovo; it must accept an international military presence with NATO at its core, to establish security inside Kosovo," Mr Shea said.
Belgrade "must allow the unrestricted return of all refugees and work to build a permanent political solution based on the Rambouillet peace plan," he said. "We are not asking for more but we will accept nothing less."