Remembering the victims of the 1999 NATO Bombing that began on March 24, 1999

Milica Rakic was a 3 year old girl killed by NATO bombs on April 17, 1999. She was one of the many victims of the NATO bombing that began on March 24, 1999, and continued for 78 consecutive days including Easter. "Codenamed 'Operation Allied Force,' it was the largest attack ever undertaken by the alliance. It was also the first time that NATO used military force without the approval of the UN Security Council and against a sovereign nation that did not pose a real threat to any member of the alliance."

In the years since the bombings, there have been many more casualties and suffered due to the approximately 10 tons of depleted uranium (DU) in a formerly hidden UN report. One example is increased cancer rates. An example is in the Vranje area detailed below. 

Threat to newborn lives
In Vranje area, which is surrounded by four known DU contaminated locations, there has been an enormous increase in cancer rates and number of newborns with genetic malformations. “In 1998, 21 children have been born with deformities. In 2008 there were 73,” says Nela Cvetkovic, a Member of the Vranje City Council, in a statement for VJM. The number of newborn didn’t change, it is about 800-1000 babies per year.

At the same time, in a six year period after the NATO bombing a number of newly registered cancer cases has more than doubled – from 185 in the year 2000 to 398 new diagnosis in 2006.

Civilians aren't the only victims of DU. "Uranium 'killing Italian troops'" in 2007 BBC report. 50 Italian peacekeepers dead and 200 more seriously ill. DU has also contributed to disabilities in children fathered by the peacekeepers.

The 1999 Bombings were NOT the first instance of people, civilian or military, getting sick from DU usage. American vets got sick from DU usage in the Iraq wars according to NBC News. The Veterans Administration (VA) lists DU usage on its website. Serbia and Kosovo are not listed but Bosnia is. On a related note, Dr. Gary Null wrote a very informative article titled "Gulf War Syndrome: A Deadly Legacy" on July 10, 2010. 

Former US Attorney General Ramsey Clark led the war crimes prosecution of the 1999 Bombings of former War Criminal in Chief Bill Clinton and others. I attended the proceedings in June 2000 at Martin Luther King High School in Manhattan. A panel of 16 judges from 11 countries at a people’s tribunalmeeting in New York June 10 before 500 people found U.S. and NATO political and military leaders guilty of war crimes against Yugoslavia in the March 24-June 10, 1999 assault onthat country.

Hundreds of thousands of Serbs, Roma, and other minorities left Kosovo after the bombings ended. The unlucky who couldn't escape ended up victims of organ harvesting according to Swiss Senator Dick Marty and former chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Tribunal, Carla del Ponte, wrote about them in her book, The Hunt. An excerpt from The Hunt follows.

"The prosecutors office received information which UNMIK officials had received from a team of trustworthy journalists that during the summer months of 1999 Kosovan Albanians had transported 300 kidnapped people from Kosovo to Albania.
"These prisoners were initially held in sheds and other structures in Kukes and Tropoje. According to the journalists’ sources, who were only identified as Kosovo Albanians, some of the younger and fitter prisoners were visited by doctors and were never hit. They were transferred to other detention camps in Burrel and the neighbouring area, one of which was a barracks behind a yellow house 20 km behind the town.
"One room inside this yellow house, the journalists said, was kitted out as a makeshift operating theatre, and it was here that surgeons transplanted the organs of prisoners. These organs, according to the sources, were then sent to Rinas airport, Tirana, to be sent to surgical clinics abroad to be transplanted to paying patients.
"One of the informers had personally carried out a shipment to the airport.
"The victims, deprived of a kidney, were then locked up again, inside the barracks, until the moment they were killed for other vital organs. In this way, the other prisoners in the barracks were aware of the fate that awaited them, and according to the source, pleaded, terrified to be killed immediately.
"Among the prisoners who were taken to these barracks were women from Kosovo, Albania, Russia and other Slavic countries. Two of the sources said that they helped to bury the corpses of the dead around the yellow house and in a neighboring cemetery.
"According to the sources, the organ smuggling was carried out with the knowledge and active involvement of middle and high ranking involvement from the KLA.

The bombing was supposedly on behalf of Albanians in Kosovo. Their mostly Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) leaders are corrupt and have robbed Kosovo blind. As a result, many Albanians have left Kosovo. From January 1 through mid February 2015, Hungary has intercepted about 10,000 asylum seekers from Kosovo. Germany has sent 20 police officers to the Hungarian-Serbia border to stem the tide of asylum traveling to Germany.