LAND OPERATIONS BY THE KLA

190. Morning Briefing by Jamie Shea, NATO Spokesman, Brussels, 23 May 1999

Jamie Shea: I will just give you the quick operational up-date overnight. First of all let me give you the one piece of news that you didn't get in your information sheet this morning, which is that last night we flew 652 sorties, 222 of those were strike sorties and that is strike sorties without air defence, and 79 were strike sorties against air defence, so all in all 301 were strike sorties in the total out of a total of 652, so as you can see somewhat very slightly below 50%. So it was quite an intensive night of air operations and that brings now the number of sorties since the beginning of Operation Allied Force to over 25,000.

As you could see, yesterday we continued to enjoy favourable weather, it was Day 60 of Operation Allied Force and again the focus was very much on the fielded forces of the Yugoslav Army in Kosovo. You have seen that we struck at least 9 armoured vehicles, 10 artillery positions, tanks and other military vehicles. In addition we struck at 3 parked aircraft, 2 SA6 surface to air missile transporters and launcher vehicles, and also a radar site. Other facilities that were attacked that directly support the Serb forces in Kosovo were a command post at Rakovica and ammunition storage sites at Urosevac, Kosovska Mitrovica and Srebscka Mitrovica.