NATO aircraft are to adopt aggressive new tactics in their offensive against the Serbian forces, the alliance announced yesterday.
The NATO Secretary-General, Mr Javier Solana, said the new tactics involved allied jets flying low-altitude runs against Serb ground forces in Kosovo. The planes would be flying "closer to the ground to weaken Milosevic's machine of police or military repression", Mr Solana told Spanish radio.
NATO officials in Brussels said targets hit overnight on Wednesday included an army headquarters building in Belgrade and an army base in Prizren. Serb "armed units and communication nodes" in Kosovo were also hit, said one official.
"It was a good night," acknowledged another. "All planned targets were served."
With weather conditions improving, NATO said its planes carried out nearly 400 sorties in the last 24 hours, including an attack on a military convoy on a road in Kosovo. All planes returned safely to base, it said.
"Our operations are ongoing with even greater success against fielded forces. Our operational tempo and effectiveness continues to increase," the NATO military spokesman Air Commodore David Wilby told a news conference at the alliance's headquarters in Brussels.
The French Defence Minister, Mr Alain Richard, said yesterday there was no reason to begin ground operations in Kosovo - for now. "The current action is more efficient and there is no reason now to change this," Mr Richard said.
The French armed forces chief, Gen Jean-Pierre Kelche, said that Serb ground forces in Kosovo remained "tough and aggressive and know how to camouflage and protect themselves".
He added that air strikes were affecting their combat capability by depriving them of fuel and other supplies. NATO had increased the number of targets its aircraft were attacking daily to more than 140, from the previous level of 50 or 60 a day, while the intensity of night raids had doubled over the past three nights.
The general insisted that NATO forces did their utmost to prevent civilian casualties and he showed a video-tape of a French attack on a barracks complex to back his assertion. It showed the destruction of two buildings just 50 metres from a road on which motorists were driving.