After the end of the bombing campaign on June 10, 1999, an international protectorate was introduced in Kosovo, whose ethnic Albanian-dominated provisional institutions unilaterally declared independence in February last year.
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Serbian Defence Minister Dragan Sutanovac presents a wreath to the martyrs monument in the 1999 NATO's bombing in Yugoslavia, in Belgrade, capital of Serbia, March 24, 2009. Serbia marked on Tuesday the 10th anniversary of the NATO's bombing campaign against it. [Xinhua]
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The Serbian government organized a series of commemorative gatherings to mark the Remembrance Day for victims of the 1999 NATO bombing.
Serbian Defense Minister Dragan Sutanovac paid respect and laid a wreath on the memorial dedicated to the fallen members of the Serbian Air Force and Air Defense.
The memorial, situated in the Serbian Air Force Command in Belgrade, was also attended by the Serbian Army Chief of General Staff Lt.Gen. Miloje Miletic and Air Force Commander Lt.Gen. Dragan Katanic.
Rasim Ljajic, Serbia's minister of labor and social policy, attended a commemorative gathering at the memorial in a Belgrade park dedicated to 89 children who lost their lives in the NATO bombing.
Serbian Minister of Culture Nebojsa Bradic laid wreaths and paid tribute to Serbian Radio Television (RTS) employees killed at their place of work during the NATO campaign.
Two hours after midnight on April 23, 1999, bombs hit the RTS building in central Belgrade, killing 16 employees and inflicting grave injuries on four others.
Commemorative gatherings were also held throughout Serbia in places where the air strikes claimed lives.
In northern Kosovo's ethnically divided town of Mitrovica, sirens went off just before noon Tuesday to mark 10 years as of the NATO air strikes on FRY, and thousands of ethnic Serbs gathered on the bridge across the Ibar River to join the March for Peace and headed for Zvecan.
The gathering symbolically started at 12:44 p.m. local time (1144 GMT), to remind of UN Security Council Resolution 1244, which stipulates Kosovo as part of FRY.
To avoid possible conflicts between Serbs and Albanians, a large number of units of the Kosovo Police Service, the EU mission's police and NATO-led Kosovo international peacekeeping force were deployed in Mitrovica to keep an eye on the event.
Radovan Nicic, president of the Association of the Serb Municipalities in Kosovo, told a Kosovo radio station that the position of the Serbs did not change after the bombing campaign stopped and that the Serb nation, under such difficult conditions, needs unity above all.