It is to avert an impending humanitarian catastrophe by disrupting the violent attacks currently being carried out by the Yugoslav

It is to avert an impending humanitarian catastrophe by disrupting the violent attacks currently being carried out by the Yugoslav security forces against the Kosovar Albanians and to limit their ability to conduct such repression in the future."A Yugoslav military communique said that 10 members of the Yugoslav army had been killed, 38 were wounded and that one was missing in the first night of bombing; 30 targets had been hit but damage was minimal.However, the Russian general staff in Moscow said the Nato attacks had badly damaged five military airfields, two factories, a communications centre, several barracks and a police training base.The British contribution was also detailed yesterday. On Wednesday, before the first allied attacks began, the Serbs in Kosovo were still destroying villages, openly carrying out a policy of "ethnic cleansing" that had to be stopped, he said."Let me make it clear, that we have the will, the determination and the stomach to see this through and to stop the flow of blood and the misery in Kosovo," said Mr Robertson.He also reiterated the aim of the operation "The military objective of these operations is clear-cut. "We're going to systematically and progressively attack, disrupt, degrade, devastate and ultimately - unless President Milosevic complies with the demands of the international community - we're going to destroy these forces and their facilities and support," said General Clark.Earlier, George Robertson, Secretary of State for Defence, stressed that the air strikes would carry on unless Mr Milosevic agreed to stop the repression of ethnic Albanians in Kosovo. The allied operation "will be just as long and difficult as President Milosevic requires it to be", he said.If all else failed, the forces that had been so brutal would be destroyed.

Despite initial attacks being made against the Yugoslavs' integrated air defence system, the situation was still potentially dangerous, he said.He also gave a blunt warning of what lies ahead unless the Yugoslavs bow to Western pressure. First reports suggested that two had been brought down by US F-15s, with the third being destroyed by a Dutch Air Force F-16.General Clark warned that, while these attacks had been repelled, they represented only one way in which the Yugoslavs could threaten alliance pilots. Airports, radar, command and control facilities and army barracks were all attacked.Military centres around Belgrade, the Yugoslav capital, were hit particularly hard.This progressive strategy, continued last night, is designed to gain air supremacy and then "degrade" the ability of Yugoslav forces to continue "ethnic cleansing" in Kosovo.Javier Solana, the Nato secretary-general, yesterday confirmed that all the allied warplanes had returned safely from the first night of attacks."Our initial reports indicate that these first strikes were successful," he said, while stressing that the operation was far from over."Let me reiterate we are determined to continue until we have achieved our objectives: to halt the violence and stop further humanitarian catastrophe," Mr Solana added.General Wesley Clark, Nato's Supreme Commander in Europe, said allied aircraft hit 40 targets throughout Yugoslavia and destroyed three Yugoslav fighters that had attacked them.Two of the MiG-29 Fulcrum aircraft, from a total of 16 in the Yugoslav air force, and the most modern they have, were shot down over Kosovo, while the other was brought down farther north. Shortly after 7pm local time, as they had a day earlier, six F-117 Stealth fighters took off from Aviano base, north Italy. Their task would be to take up where they had left off the previous night, continuing with the campaign aimed at the systematic destruction of Yugoslav air defences and other military capabilities.Surprisingly little anti-aircraft fire was encountered during the first raids, so planes in action last night were expected to widen the scope of their targets from the integrated air defence system to direct hits on army and special police units, both in the disputed province of Kosovo and elsewhere in Yugoslavia.Wednesday night's bombing attacked targets as far apart at Novi Sad in the north of Serbia, to Montenegro in the west and Kosovo in the south. American B-52s based at RAF Fairford, Gloucestershire, which led the way with salvos of cruise missiles on Wednesday, were rearmed and ready to fly again yesterday afternoon. Public concern and even interest in the deployment of US forces appears to be relatively low.Andrew Gumbel. NATO COMMANDERS said the first round of air strikes against Yugoslavia had been successful, even as their aircraft were being armed for another night's bombardment.

"The Serbs need a spanking, that's for sure," writes Logothetis1. "Actually, they are an ill nation, that needs help, nurturing, and support National therapy .. The Serbs have a lot of healing to do The US is not helping. Fuel to fire, isolation, sanctions, biased one-sided coverage, and now war!; this will not help Serbia regain her humanity."Although the intervention of US forces has unleashed strong passions, those expressing such views are confined to quite a small constituency: news junkies who surf the Internet and watch 24- hour news channels, or people with a personal interest - emigres from the region and of Albanian, Serbian and Greek descent. "Not all the rhetoric is quite so forthright and some is tinged with touchy- feely American psychobabble. "Why are you so primitive you need Nato to help you? Why can't your, as you say, 3,000-year-old `civilisation' take native Serbian land itself?"Another ideologue, called Freedom4serbia, traces it all back to the Albanians' treacherous alliance with Ottoman Turkey "Once a Ottoman bastard .. always an Ottoman bastard .. it's written in your genes .. evolution will eventually remove you from this planet ... There have been plenty of verbal punch-ups and passionate outpourings of opinion in cyberspace. "I hope a lot of American lives will be lost in the next few days; that would teach them a lesson not to interfere with one small sovereign country who is just defending its own territory," says one unmistakably Serb voice called Vlad on the Los Angeles Times conference page on Kosovo. "Hey Vlad," replies Lento57.

"Americans do not go to Kosovo to die, but to kick some butt."Chat forums have been so clogged since the Nato attacks began that they are hard to access. More than 12,000 people have contributed to the online debate hosted by The New York Times alone, with tens of thousands more plugging into Albanian discussion forums, Serbian discussion forums and other sites hosted by newspapers and television networks.Kosovo politics are esoteric, and many non-Balkan contributors display a rudimentary knowledge of the situation combined with free-floating anxiety about the consequences for Europe and the US military forces being deployed.The real bile, though, comes from people who know the region best "Albanians!" says a Serb called Okovalev. THE STRUGGLE over Kosovo is being fought not only in the airspace over Yugoslavia and Albanian villages on the ground: at least one small part of the conflict is being played out over the Internet. Give him a map, he said, and he could point to Yugoslavia, but as for .. Where was it again? "You see, I can't even pronounce it.".

He was not much further ahead than the children on what was going on."I usually try to keep up on it, the news, but you know," he said Recently he has working shifts from 6am to 11pm. (I suggested that maybe it was Sunoco that the lady on the radio had confused with Kosovo - or, more likely, Conoco). "That's where the Titanic sank," he reminded his friends.Bobby Brown is the manager of the petrol station just across the road from the Old Greenwich School It's a Sunoco station. He would have been pleased, too, that this class had a sense that going into a war can be dangerous.One boy turned anxiously to this visiting reporter to ask: "Will they be sending planes here?"Somebody else was worried about the distance involved and the fact that US soldiers had to cross the Atlantic. The same girl added that stopping wars is important because sometimes they spread.President Clinton would have applauded her. "It's the North fighting South," one boy noted.One of the girls in the class then spoke with great authority of Israel and Egypt once going to war over Sinai.