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News for this April 5, 1999 had much to do with the situation in the former Yugoslavia.
Air raid sirens sounded in Belgrade signaling the start of a 12th night of NATO strikes on Yugoslavia The Tanjug state news agency reported antiaircraft fire was heard in Novi Sad the nation’s second-largest city followed by an explosion. The independent Beta news agency reported a powerful explosion in the Belgrade area around midnight. More than 20 explosions during a half-hour span were heard around Pristina where NATO planes later targeted an oil depot it said Hours later. NATO planes hit two suburbs of the capital Rakovica to the south and Surcin to the northwest the Belgrade crisis center said. A stone quarry was targeted in a populated area of Rakovica while a missile struck near Belgrade’s airport near Surcin causing minor damage to the main terminal the official Tanjug news agency reported.
Meanwhile – As NATO planes hammered an air force building army barracks and the capital’s airport and bridges today in Yugoslavia the United States and its allies were preparing to airlift as many as 10,0000 ethnic Albanian refugees out of the embattled Balkans and offer them temporary shelter abroad. US officials emphasized Sunday that the effort is not aimed at permanently resettling the more than 35,0000 refugees from Kosovo. NATO authorities repeatedly have vowed they will ensure that all ethnic Albanians who have been driven from Kosovo since the bombing began March 24 will be able to return to their homes under protection from an allied peacekeeping force. But NATO spokesmen in Brussels Belgium said the United States has agreed to take 20,000 refugees with Germany accepting 40,000 Turkey 20,000 Norway 6,000 and Greece and Canada 5,000 each in an effort to ease the burden on overwhelmed authorities in Albania and Macedonia while the conflict rages on.
And preparations for the trial of two Libyans accused of the Lockerbie airliner bombing gathered pace yesterday as Scottish prosecutors flew into the Netherlands and officials gathered in Libya for the suspects’ surrender. Diplomats said several senior foreign officials had arrived in Libya to witness the handover of the two accused Abdel Basset Ali Mohamed al-Megrahi and Lamen Khalifa Fhimah to a United Nations team. Arab League Assistant Secretary-General Ahmed bin Hilli and Egypt’s Administrative Development Minister Mohamed Zaki Abu Amer entered Libya overland at the Tunisian border post of Ras Jedir, the diplomats said. A South African envoy, whose name was not disclosed, was already in Tripoli. In Amsterdam, Scottish prosecutors Norman McFadyen and Jim Brisbane landed at Schiphol airport for the men’s trial under Scottish law.
Sheriff Graham Cox, the regional judge who will oversee pretrial proceedings, was expected to follow today.
And as reports from Yugoslavia continued, that’s a small slice of what happened for this April 5, 1999 as reported by the BBC World Service Program Newsdesk.
