On this day, NATO began the big attack against Yugoslavia, after the independence of Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia and North Macedonia.
Specifically, on March 24, 1999, at 20:45, NATO aircraft began raids against targets in Yugoslavia.
"NATO is launching bombing raids against Yugoslavia because the latter refuses to sign the agreement on the future of Kosovo. The airstrikes will last three months, until Yugoslav forces withdraw from the area. It is the first attack in the history of the Alliance against a sovereign state".
And not only that. It was the first air attack on European soil since the end of the Second World War, and in a country a stone's throw from Greece's northern border.
In the said bombings, the NATO forces, mainly American, used bombs of the latest - for the time - technology of depleted uranium, mainly hitting infrastructures of strategic importance of the Yugoslav state.
The coup, which took place in the penultimate year of Bill Clinton's term as president of the USA, caused a very large popular reaction in Greece which was mainly expressed in rallies and concerts in favor of the Yugoslav people.
In fact, the AEK football team, in a bold move, showed up in Belgrade in the middle of the bombings and played a friendly game with a purely anti-war character against Partizan.
The bombing continued until an agreement was reached, which led to the withdrawal of Yugoslav armed forces from Kosovo and the creation of the United Nations Interim Administration in Kosovo (UNMIK), a UN peacekeeping mission in Kosovo.
The blood toll for Slobodan Milosevic's Yugoslavia was heavy with 3600 dead , mainly civilian population but also soldiers and policemen. The economic destruction of the Yugoslav state amounted to a staggering 30 billion dollars (at 1999 prices).
The NATO bombing of Yugoslavia was, as we said, the largest military operation in Europe after World War II. All NATO countries, except Greece, Iceland and Luxembourg, participated in the bombing. Also, all neighboring countries of Yugoslavia, which were not yet members of NATO, ceded their territory and airspace to the forces of the North Atlantic Alliance.
After reaching an agreement in Kumanovo, ratified by UN Security Council resolution 1244, the withdrawal of the Yugoslav army and security forces from Kosovo began and the deployment, on June 12, 1999, of an international military force.
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