WASHINGTON -- An American F-117A stealth fighter crashed in Yugoslavia on Saturday, but the pilot was rescued, the Defense Department said late Saturday.
"He and the combat rescue team that picked him up are all safe," Pentagon spokesman Kenneth Bacon said at a news conference. He said he could not provide details.Word of the dramatic rescue came several hours after Serb officials claimed they shot down the radar-evading fighter jet.
Bacon said he could not say what caused the plane to "crash" -- whether it was shot down or it malfunctioned.
President Clinton praised the pilot and the rescue team.
"I'm tremendously proud of the skills of the pilot and the courageous individuals who participated in the recovery," Clinton said in a statement. He added that despite the risk, the NATO operation will "go forward as planned."
NATO meanwhile expanded its air assault by ordering its forces to attack tanks, artillery and troops in Kosovo.
In Russia, angry lawmakers on Saturday demanded an immediate halt to the airstrikes and called for upgrading Russia's military preparedness and freezing the START II nuclear-arms reduction treaty.
President Boris Yeltsin and his deputies meanwhile searched for ways to support Yugoslavia without being drawn deeper into a conflict with the West.
Earlier Saturday, air raid alarms sounded across Yugoslavia on the fourth straight day of attacks, and Belgrade's air raid alert center said enemy planes were in the skies and had struck military targets in the suburbs of Rakovica and Zemun. It appealed for calm, saying only military sites were being targeted.
NATO Secretary-General Javier Solana said the stepped-up assault, which he said had the approval of every government in the alliance, was needed "to bring a halt to violence in Kosovo and prevent further humanitarian catastrophe."
Clinton and British Prime Minister Tony Blair on Saturday repeated their insistence that NATO had to act to prevent Yugoslav security forces from slaughtering ethnic Albanians in Kosovo or driving them from their homes.
Skies cleared after more than a day of heavy rain over Aviano near the Italian Alps, and by dusk Saturday fighter jets were screaming off the runway every few seconds. Tomahawk missiles also were fired from U.S. ships.
After meeting with his foreign policy team, Clinton spoke with the leaders of key NATO allies Italy, Germany, Britain and France and agreed to proceed with the next phase of airstrikes.
"All the leaders agreed that it was time to broaden or deepen the attack," National Security Council spokesman David Leavy said.
Without giving details, NATO officials had said the first three nights of bombing and missile strikes severely damaged Milosevic's air defenses, setting up the attacks on his ground forces accused of trying to drive off or kill much of Kosovo's ethnic Albanian population.
But NATO spokesmen said there were no present plans to send troops into Kosovo, as called for by ethnic Albanian leaders and guerrilla fighters.
U.S. pilots at the Aviano base Saturday afternoon, speaking to the media for the first time, had said they were surprised by how little resistance they were encountering.
Besides deterring atrocities in Kosovo by Yugoslav security forces, the NATO raids are intended to force Milosevic to agree to a peace deal that calls for NATO troops to be based in Kosovo to keep the peace. The deal has already been accepted by the province's ethnic Albanian majority.
But Milosevic, through an official government statement issued Saturday, again rejected the plan.
"The citizens of Yugoslavia are unanimous in their resolve not to allow at any cost the enemies to occupy their country," said the statement.
NATO officials, Western leaders and ethnic Albanians said atrocities by Milosevic's forces in Kosovo continued.
British Defense Secretary George Robertson called Milosevic a "serial ethnic cleanser" and said: "The Serbs are bombarding villages to the point of obliteration. We have heard that some villages do not exist."
Ethnic Albanian leader Hashim Thaci, who wants NATO to send in ground troops, called Saturday the "worst day since the struggle began."
NATO spokesmen said allied aircraft flew 249 sorties on Friday night and early Saturday morning, continuing to target military installations. They said bad weather hampered the operation, with some planes returning without firing missiles. Cruise missile strikes from sea-based warships were unhindered.
Signs of possible escalation of the Kosovo conflict continued, with two Yugoslav helicopters flying over neighboring Bosnia-Herzegovina before turning back when confronted by NATO jet fighters, according to a NATO account of the incident.
In his weekly radio broadcast to the United States on Saturday, Clinton said the campaign would continue until Milosevic "accepts peace or we have seriously damaged his capacity to make war."
Serb officials have repeatedly said they were willing to take part in negotiations on Kosovo, if the bombing stopped. But Western leaders say talks took place in France last month to reach the peace deal accepted by the ethnic Albanians.
Protests against the NATO operation continued throughout Europe, with 3,500 demonstrators in Stuttgart, Germany, shouting anti-American slogans and denouncing Clinton as a murderer.
First word that the stealth fighter was down came from Serb television, which showed vivid footage of a burning fighter. A few hours later, a senior officer at Hollomon Air Force Base in New Mexico, where the stealth fighters are permanently based, confirmed a plane from his squadron was down.
The Air Force has 54 F-117s, at a cost of $45 million each.
Even before the airstrikes were launched, Clinton and senior defense officials had raised the possibility that planes could be shot down and pilots could be lost.
Because of the risks, the Pentagon has sent numerous search-and-rescue teams to the region, including the 24th Marine Expeditionary Unit. Marines from the unit rescued Air Force Capt. Scott O'Grady when he was shot down over Bosnia in 1995.
The boomerang-shaped F-117A Nighthawk, which carries a one-man crew, is armed with laser-guided bombs. Its stealth technology uses curved or angular surfaces to reduce radar reflection, and when combined with radar-absorbing composite materials, the plane's 43-foot wingspan displays an electronic cross-section the size of a bumblebee.