BELGRADE, Yugoslavia -- NATO aircraft and missiles blasted targets in Yugoslavia for a second night, directing much of their fire on Kosovo, where fighting raged between Serbs and ethnic Albanians. NATO forces launched their first daylight attack on Yugoslavia, Belgrade's independent Studio B television reported.
Air raid sirens wailed at midafternoon Friday in Belgrade, and bombs hit suburban targets, the television station reported, citing a city official. No sound of bombing was audible in central Belgrade.Western officials called the previous two nights of attacks a successful start to forcing President Slobodan Milosevic to agree to a peace deal.
But Yugoslavia's army maintained its defiant tone, claiming it inflicted "substantial damage" against an "overpoweringly stronger enemy."
Yugoslav forces continued their offensive on the ground Thursday against ethnic Albanians. International monitors and relief officials forced to leave Kosovo because of the bombing said they feared Serb forces were burning villages and killing ethnic Albanians or forcing them to flee.
Ethnic Albanian sources reported persistent gunfire overnight in Pristina, the Kosovo capital, and an ethnic Albanian human rights group said a political figure and a union leader were killed in Kosovska Mitrovica.
The U.N. refugee agency said Kosovo refugees who crossed into Albania say 20 men were shot to death by Serb forces evacuating the village of Goden on Thursday. It said it was unable to verify the account.
"With only a handful of independent observers left on the ground, we are extremely worried about the plight of Kosovo's civilian population, which has already been through a terrible ordeal," U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees Sadako Ogata said in Geneva.
William Walker, the U.S. head of the 1,400-member monitoring mission that left Kosovo this week, also said the situation was deteriorating. The Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe decided Friday to reduce Walker's mission created last year to monitor a failed peace agreement down to 250 people.
Western officials insisted Friday the barrage won't stop until Milosevic agrees to a peace deal.
"There's not going to be one knockout blow, but day after day, if he does not stop his genocidal attacks on the Kosovo people, we will take larger and larger lumps out of his military force," British Defense Secretary George Robertson said.
In Washington, President Clinton appealed directly to the Serbian people Friday for support in NATO's struggle against Milosevic. He said Milosevic has imperiled their future and forced their "sons to keep fighting a senseless conflict that you did not ask for and that he could have prevented,"
In a videotaped message sent to the Serbs by satellite, Clinton said, "President Milosevic has spoken often of Serbia's standing in the world, but by his every action he has diminished your country's standing, exposed you to violence and instability and isolated you from the rest of Europe."
Secretary of State Madeleine Albright made a similar pitch in the Serbo-Croatian language. When she was a girl, her father served in the Czechoslovak Embassy in Belgrade.
The coordinated messages clearly were designed to unsettle Milosevic's rule and turn his people against him.
Recalling her family's escape to Yugoslavia when the Nazis took over her homeland, Albright said: "Americans do not hate Serbs. Like me, they remember that we were allies against fascism. Like you, Americans want to live in peace with their neighbors and the wider world. Like Serbs, we have no wish to see our children die in battle far from home."
NATO commander Gen. Wesley Clark said Friday on NBC's "Today" show that air attacks are going after the Yugoslav military infrastructure, including command and control facilities, air defenses and early warning sites.
"We're making steady headway just as we had anticipated," Clark said. "We've done severe damage to a number of targets."
There was no hint from Milosevic that he would back down over Kosovo, the southern province of Serbia. He cut off diplomatic relations with the United States, France, Germany and Britain, while Serbian authorities ordered journalists from NATO nations out of the country. Scores did so, but some were trying to return Friday after conciliatory statements from Yugoslav officials.
The strikes Thursday hit inside Kosovo around Pristina, the northern town of Kosovska Mitrovica and the southwestern town of Prizren, media in Yugoslavia said. Serbian TV said three missiles hit a police station on a military base, injuring one policeman and leaving two others missing.
A Belgrade city official said there was "heavy activity" by warplanes attacking targets outside the Yugoslav capital, Belgrade. The official Tanjug news agency reported that an airport in the central Serbian city of Nis had been hit and was in flames.
Local television broadcast appeals for blood donors after 10 explosions rattled Kraljevo, 75 miles south of Belgrade, the independent Beta news agency said.
In Montenegro, Yugoslavia's other republic, there were reports of explosions at army compounds and barracks, as well as at an airport and radar facilities in various towns.
A NATO missile hit Djakovica, near the Kosovo-Albanian border, missing an army compound, Tanjug reported. "The material damage is substantial, and there are casualties," it said.
In Moscow, Russian President Boris Yeltsin met his senior ministers and intelligence chiefs on Friday to discuss how to react to NATO's sustained attacks on Yugoslavia, but failed to announce any new retaliatory measures.
While the Russian leadership mulled its next move, angry demonstrators spent a second day outside the U.S. and other NATO embassies, and Russian newspapers mined a rich vein of invective against the Western alliance.
"We spoke about the necessity of working out further measures that could promote the cause of a political settlement and the necessity of stopping the crime that is being perpetrated against Yugoslavia," Prime Minister Yevgeny Primakov told parliamentary leaders after his meeting with Yeltsin.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Yakushkin said Yeltsin was briefed by Primakov, Defense Minister Igor Sergeyev, Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov and the chiefs of military and foreign intelligence.