RTS resumes broadcasting

Belgrade, April 23 (Tanjug) - NATO criminals targeted the Radio-TV Serbia (RTS) building in the very heart of Belgrade at 02:06 a.m. local time Friday, the city emergency center confirmed in a statement to Tanjug. All three RTS programs were knocked off the air in the attack. According to first information, there are casualties.

Civil defense crews were at the scene minutes after the Radio-TV Serbia (RTS) building was. "Crews are trying to rescue the RTS members who were on the job. There are wounded. We are pulling out of the rubble one wounded person at this very point. We are doing everything we can," city civil defense commander Dragan Covic told Studio B TV.

Covic urged Belgraders who live nearby to keep away from the hit RTS building because new detonations were possible.

In the criminal NATO air assault on the Radio-TV Serbia (RTS) headquarters in the heart of Belgrade, several surrounding buildings, most of them housing facilities, also suffered damages.

The damaged buildings include the Centre for Children and Youths in Takovska St. and the children's theatre Dusko Radovic, both right next to the hit RTS building.

The RTS employees, whose building was hit last night by the NATO missile, are doing their best to resume broadcasting the programme. They have been broadcasting it regularly since the beginning of the air strikes, and are now knocked off the air. There were many journalists, technicians and other employees in the building at the time of the strike.

Some Radio-TV Serbia (RTS) staff members who were broadcasting a program at the time of the criminal NATO missile attack on the RTS headquarters in the very centre of Belgrade early Friday have recounted the horrors inside the destroyed section of the building.

"We were sitting in the broadcasting room and working, when a blast was heard. The wall before us disappeared, and next we realized that there was nothing two meters behind us. We only heard the moans of the wounded," Sava Andjelkovic, head of the broadcasting shift, recounted.

The wounded RTS members have been rescued from under the rubble, but no reports are available about whether there have been any fatalities.

Eighteen wounded members of Serbian Radio and Television (RTS) were admitted to Belgrade's Emergency Centre early on Friday, according to RTS.

One of the wounded, who were doing their job when the U.S.-led NATO aggressors targeted a part of the RTS building soon after 2 a.m., died, while another, who sustained severe injuries to his internal organs, was immediately operated, RTS quoted Emergency Centre sources as saying.

According to the latest information, there are casualties, but their number is unknown yet. Many of them are wounded, most of them transported to hospitals.

This barbaric attack on journalists is unprecedented in the world history.

Fire brigades have managed to put out the fire that broke out when a missile hit the part of the RTS building where the broadcasting and technical rooms where located.

The four-storey part of the building collapsed, so that the remaining part looks as being cut off. RTS members whose offices were in the building's ground floor and first floor are believed to be trapped in the rubble.

A large number of RTS members, who have arrived at the scene to watch rescue operations, have voiced their embitterment at NATO's heinous crime.