BRUSSELS, Belgium -- NATO launched airstrikes against Yugoslavia on Wednesday, NATO Secretary-General Javier Solana said.
Solana gave no details about the number of aircraft or missiles involved in the initial phase of the attack, nor what the targets were."We must stop the violence and bring an end to the humanitarian catastrophe now taking place in Kosovo," he said. "We have a moral duty to do so."
The NATO action followed the collapse of months of diplomatic efforts by the Americans and several European nations. The order was given to attack after a last-ditch effort by U.S. special envoy Richard Holbrooke failed to persuade Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic to halt his offensive against ethnic Albanians in Kosovo.
"In the last months, the international community has spared no efforts to achieve a negotiated solution in Kosovo," Solana said in a written statement. "But it has not been possible."
U.S. B-52 bombers took off from their base in Britain early Wednesday, and air raid sirens sounded in Kosovo's capital. French radio said waves of planes departed Wednesday night from Aviano air base in northern Italy, across the Adriatic Sea from Yugoslavia.
Detonations went off in Pristina, Kosovo's capital. Residents reached by telephone said at least four huge detonations were heard -- one quite loud. Air raid sirens also were heard in the Yugoslav capital, but no explosions.
Milosevic, in a nationally televised address, called on his people to defend the country "by all means."
"What is at stake here is the freedom of the entire country," Milosevic said. He reiterated his rejection of foreign troops to police a U.S.-brokered peace deal for Kosovo.
In Washington, President Clinton cast the confrontation as a stand against "racial, ethnic, religious and cultural" aggression.
"Only firmness now can prevent greater catastrophe later," the president said at a hastily called news conference. "Kosovo's crisis is now full-blown and if we do not act clearly it will get even worse," Clinton said. He said he will address the nation Wednesday night.
Clinton said the United States and its NATO allies have three goals:
To show their determination to gain peace in the Balkans.
To make Milosevic pay a price for violence against ethnic Albanians in the Serb province of Kosovo.
To diminish the Serbs' ability to wage war on the Kosovars.
Clinton's national security advisers were summoned to a White House meeting on the escalating crisis early Wednesday. Afterward, national security adviser Sandy Berger briefed House Democrats.
Clinton telephoned Russian President Boris Yeltsin and spent 35 minutes explaining Holbrooke's lack of progress with Milosevic and trying to stave off a rift in U.S.-Russian relations. Russian Prime Minister Yevgeny Primakov showed his opposition to the planned bombing by postponing his visit to Washington.
"He (made) the case that it's important that we have good relations with Russia and that we should not allow a dispute on a single issue to derail the important work we're doing on a wide variety of issues," said White House spokesman Joe Lockhart.
The State Department spokesman called Milosevic a "petty dictator" and said NATO has decided to use military force to try to avert a humanitarian crisis in Kosovo of "staggering dimensions."
State Department spokesman James P. Rubin confirmed that the last of the Belgrade-based U.S. diplomats have left the country. He urged Americans in Serbia and Montenegro to leave.
An estimated 40,000 Yugoslav army and Serbian police forces are in Kosovo, pursuing the crackdown Milosevic launched in February 1998 to try to crush ethnic Albanian rebels in the poor southern province of Serbia, the dominant republic in Yugoslavia.
Fighting raged in several Kosovo villages Wednesday.
Serb tanks could be heard firing volley after volley for nearly two hours near the Blace border crossing into neighboring Macedonia, 12 miles north of the Macedonian capital Skopje.
An Associated Press television news crew saw three devastated villages with about 100 houses ablaze about two miles across the border from Blace.
The refusal of Milosevic to call off attacks and sign a peace plan agreed to in Paris last week by the ethnic Albanians, despite repeated pleas from the West, prompted NATO officials late Tuesday to order the allied military action.