The civilian death toll in NATO's 20-day war against Yugoslavia rose sharply again yesterday when a passenger train in southeast Serbia was hit in an air attack, killing at least 10 people and severely wounding 16 others.
According to Yugoslav authorities, the train from Belgrade to Thessalonika in Greece was trapped on a railway bridge over the Morava River gorge when a missile aimed at the road bridge above it severed the electrical cables powering the train.
Another missile then hit the train itself, setting fire to two carriages and plunging two others into the narrow river gorge.
The US Secretary of State, Ms Madeleine Albright, earlier yesterday said NATO operations would continue until its conditions were met. Speaking in Brussels she also declared that she would seek "common ground" on the Kosovo crisis when she meets the Russian Foreign Minister, Mr Igor Ivanov, in Olso today.
She said NATO wanted Russia, the only non-NATO member of the major powers' Contact Group on former Yugoslavia, "to be part of the solution in Kosovo". Yugoslavia's Moscow ambassador, Mr Borislav Milosevic, the president's brother, said Belgrade would not negotiate a political solution directly with NATO, but saw a major role for Russia.
Mrs Albright yesterday rebuffed a Kosovo Liberation Army request for anti-tank weapons.
NATO acknowledged that its aircraft had attacked the Serbian bridges. The Belgrade government said the destruction of the train was "a criminal attack".
By firing cruise missiles in the early afternoon - earlier attacks were at night - and by targeting civilian infrastructure, NATO has over the past 10 days greatly increased the likelihood that it would kill civilians. A 10-year-old child was among those killed yesterday and state television reported that disabled people were also among the casualties.
Victims whose bodies were recovered had been burned alive. The Yugoslav foreign ministry spokesman said the train also carried Greek journalists.
The alliance yesterday claimed that the railway was "an important military supply line". Speaking in Brussels, its spokesman, Mr Jamie Shea, admitted yesterday that "there was a train on or near the bridge at the time of the strike". But he wanted to stress, he said, "that there was no intention whatsoever to cause damage to the train".
In Dublin, the Workers Party described the bombing of the train as "a war crime under all legal definitions of the term". The party's International Affairs Committee said the bombing "was an inexcusable act of slaughter".
e from human rights, democracy and trade union groups in Serbia which stated that "NATO military intervention has undermined all results we have achieved". The NGOs had also spoken out "against the repression of Kosovo Albanians called for the autonomy of Kosovo". The director of Trocaire said world leaders should "strive to find a peaceful resolution to the conflict". In other attacks yesterday (Mon), NATO bombed another oil refinery and NATO carried out more air raids last night against two refineries in Novi Sad in northern Serbia and at Pancevo a few kilometers north of the capital, Tanjug news agency said. Another cruise missile was fired earlier at the Zastava car and weapons factory in Kragujevac, where 120 workers were wounded last week. Reports came in of two huge fires on the outskirts of Pristina.
Serb military authorities claimed that border units of the Yugoslav army killed 150 "terrorists" from the KLA who attempted yesterday to cross into Kosovo through a forest near Morina, on Serbia's border with Albania.
NATO foreign ministers meeting in Brussels denounced the Serb forces' treatment of ethnic Albanians in Kosovo as "a fundamental challenge to the values of democracy and human rights and the rule of law".
They insisted that President Milosevic must comply with the alliance's three main demands - an end to all Serb military operations in Kosovo, the withdrawal of all Serb forces from Kosovo and the return of Albanian refugees - before the bombardment will stop.
But news agency reports said that Mrs Albright yesterday left open the possibility that Yugoslavia may be able to retain some security forces in Kosovo after the conflict.
The foreign ministers were unanimous in their decision to continue and increase the strike force against Yugoslavia but they were equally adamant that ground troops would not be sent in to support the air offensive.
The ministers said they were determined, when the conflict had been resolved, to work towards resettlement of refugees in their homes and towards the Partnership for Peace programme. They asked Ireland and other neutral countries to participate through offers of engineering and other peacekeeping means.
French and US helicopters and troops arrived in Albania, the vanguard of NATO's 8,000-strong mission to help aid agencies cope with the influx of 300,000 refugees.
Both Ms Albright and the British Foreign Secretary, Mr Robin Cook, hoped that Russia would join with the allies in rebuilding Kosovo.