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UÇKHistory and Memory

24 March 1999 – 10 June 1999 · 1999

NATO's air campaign (Operation Allied Force)

NATO began air strikes against the FRY on 24 March 1999, without explicit Security Council authorisation, and suspended them on 10 June after 78 days.
Evidence status: Documented. Supported by contemporaneous documents, institutional reports or independent studies that corroborate one another.The 1998–1999 warInternational intervention

Editorial status: Awaiting verificationDrafted from the cited sources; not yet fully reviewed by the editors.

Key facts

Date
24 March 1999 – 10 June 1999
Place
Unknown
Sources
4
Evidence status
Evidence status: Documented. Supported by contemporaneous documents, institutional reports or independent studies that corroborate one another.

The strikes began after Holbrooke announced on 23 March that his final talks with Milošević had failed [1] [2]. According to NATO, more than 38,000 sorties were flown, 10,484 of them strike sorties [3]. The legality debate and the civilian casualties of the bombing are covered on the NATO page and in the related research article.

Sources

  1. [1]Tribunali Penal Ndërkombëtar për ish-Jugosllavinë (ICTY). Prosecutor v. Milutinović et al., Judgement, Volume 1 of 4. 2009-02-26. IT-05-87-T. https://www.icty.org/x/cases/milutinovic/tjug/en/jud090226-e1of4.pdf. Accessed 2026-09-16. — para. 398
  2. [2]Fred Abrahams, Benjamin Ward. Under Orders: War Crimes in Kosovo. 2001-10-26. https://www.hrw.org/reports/2001/kosovo/. Accessed 2026-09-16.
  3. [3]NATO. Kosovo Air Campaign (March–June 1999): Operation Allied Force. 2024-10-21. https://www.nato.int/en/what-we-do/operations-and-missions/kosovo-air-campaign-march-june-1999. Accessed 2026-09-16.
  4. [4]Ivo H. Daalder, Michael E. O’Hanlon. Winning Ugly: NATO's War to Save Kosovo. Brookings Institution Press, 2001-10-01. https://www.brookings.edu/books/winning-ugly/. Accessed 2026-09-16.

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