Technologies To The People on Fri, 16 Apr 1999 08:52:41 +0200 |
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Syndicate: Bombing civilians |
BRUSSELS, Belgium, April 15 (UPI) -- NATO has confirmed it mistakenly bombed a civilian vehicle in a convoy Wednesday in Kosovo and played a tape of the report by the pilot of the plane that dropped the bombs. NATO officials said the pilot, whose name is not being released, spent 25 minutes over the area in western Kosovo where the attack occurred, watching a pattern of burning villages from north to south around the town of Djakovic. The pilot said: ``I worked various targets throughout the morning with not a lot of success due to weather. Near the town of Dakovica, I saw what looked to be an internally displaced persons convoy on the west side of town.'' The pilot said he flew north and saw a village that was on fire and appeared to be nearly burned out. Moving south, he saw a series of villages also on fire, progressively fresh, indicating whoever was burning them was also moving north to south. The pilot said, ``The picture I'm building now...is that the MUP and VJ (Serb-led Yugoslav forces) are methodically working themselves from the north to south through villages, setting them ablaze and forcing them out of the villages.'' The pilot was flying an F-16 at 15,000 feet. He said he came upon a three-vehicle convoy he believed to be military -- ``uniformly shaped, dark green vehicle, looked like deuce and half (2.5 ton) troop-carrying vehicles'' -- about a kilometer southeast of the damage, apparently about to set fire to another house. NATO said the pilot's wingman also confirmed the target. The pilot made several passes over vehicles to insure they were in fact military vehicles. He said: ``I roll in on two passes, both with eyeballs and targeting pod, (infrared) picture....I make a decision at that point these are the people responsible for burning down the villages I've seen so far.'' He continued: ``I execute a laser-guided bomb attack, destroying the lead vehicle. From there my wingman is low on fuel, so we end up departing.'' The pilot passed the targeting and threat information on to his replacement, who then bombed another group of three, apparently military trucks. The pilot explained, ``He now spots three large trucks in the middle of the housing area next to where we just attacked, and he proceeds to execute a buddy lase attack on these vehicles.'' A ``buddy lase attack'' means one aircraft lased, or emitted a laser light, the target, and another released the bomb. The first bomb, at least, apparently hit a tractor carrying refugees. In Washington, U.S. Defense Secretary William Cohen said the pilot was taking anti-aircraft artillery fire and possible shoulder launched missiles during the course of the attack. NATO spokesman Brig Gen. Giuseppe Marani said: ``After they were attacked probably the best information (as to their identity) we have was what's on television.'' No explanation was made how the pilot could have mistaken a tractor for a 2.5 ton military truck, except he was operating from a high altitude and did not have independent information on the target beyond what he was observing. ------Syndicate mailinglist-------------------- Syndicate network for media culture and media art information and archive: http://www.v2.nl/east/ to unsubscribe, write to <syndicate-request@aec.at> in the body of the msg: unsubscribe your@email.adress