Police, firefighters and medical teams are on hand to ensure safe transport
Nice:
Experts on Sunday defused a bomb left behind in a 1999 NATO bombing of a southern Serbian city, officials said, prompting the evacuation of more than a thousand residents.
Interior Ministry officials said the 1,000 kilogram (2,200 pound) bomb had been successfully defused from a construction site near Nice.
Photos show a construction site in Niš, southern Serbia, where unexploded bombs from a 1999 NATO bombing raid were dismantled
Image source: AFP
“It is being transported to a safe place where it will be destroyed,” official Luca Kausik told reporters.
He added that 1,300 residents of the area where the bomb was found had been evacuated for safety reasons before the bomb was defused.
Police oversee the evacuation of a neighborhood in Nis
Image source: AFP
Police, firefighters and medical teams were on hand to ensure the cargo was transported safely.
The MK-84 bomb has an explosive charge of 430 kilograms, Causic said.
NATO began its bombing of Serbia on March 24, 1999, without the approval of the United Nations Security Council, and lasted for 78 days.
The aim was to end Serbian leader Slobodan Milosevic’s bloody crackdown on Albanian separatists in Kosovo.
On May 7, 1999, one of the bloodiest events during the campaign occurred in Niš. Nato planes dropped cluster bombs on a crowded central souk, killing more than a dozen people. The incident was later described as a “mistake.”
On May 12 of the same year, the city was bombed again by cluster bombs, killing 11 civilians.
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