Key events since NATO began military action against Yugoslavia

March 24 - NATO launches air war against Yugoslav military targets.

March 25 - Yugoslavia breaks off diplomatic relations with United States, France, Germany and Britain.

March 27 - Ethnic Albanians fleeing or expelled from Kosovo begin to pour into Albania and Macedonia. - U.S. Stealth bomber goes down near Belgrade, pilot rescued.

April 1 - Yugoslav television shows three bruised U.S. soldiers captured near Macedonia-Kosovo border.

April 3 - NATO missiles destroy Yugoslav and Serbian interior ministries in first strikes in central Belgrade.

April 4 - Airlift proposed to take 100,000 Kosovo Albanians to NATO countries. Macedonia agrees to camps for another 100,000.

April 6 - NATO bombs kill at least five people and injure dozens of others when the residential area of Aleksinac, 150 km south of Belgrade, is hit.

April 12 - NATO hits passenger train south of Belgrade. Yugoslavia says at least 30 dead. NATO apologises for "uncanny accident."

April 14 - NATO air strikes hit ethnic Albanian refugees in Kosovo road convoys. Yugoslavia reports 64 dead. NATO, after confusing accounts, admits five days later it may have made mistakes.

April 15 - Yugoslavia rules out foreign military force in Kosovo.

April 16 - Refugee exodus returns to crisis level of 20,000 a day.

April 21 - NATO missiles blast headquarters of Milosevic's Serbian Socialist Party and his private residence, both in Belgrade.

April 23 - Russian Balkans envoy Viktor Chernomyrdin says Milosevic agrees to deployment of foreign troops in Kosovo, but Yugoslavia later says it discussed only a possible unarmed U.N. presence. - NATO destroys Serbian state television building in central Belgrade, killing at least 10 people.

April 24 - NATO 50th anniversary summit in Washington dominated by Kosovo conflict and plans to board and search ships suspected of delivering oil and arms to Yugoslavia.

April 27 - Serbian TV says 20 people, mainly women and children, are killed during an air strike on army barracks in the southern Serbian town of Surdulica.

April 28 - Yugoslav Deputy Prime Minister Vuk Draskovic is sacked after calling for the stationing of foreign troops in Kosovo under U.N. control.

April 29 - Yugoslavia files suit at International Court of Justice against 10 NATO countries over air strikes. Case due on May 10.

April 30 - NATO hits Yugoslav army headquarters and Defence Ministry. Five people are reported killed.

May 1 - U.S. President Bill Clinton extends U.S. sanctions to ban oil sales and freeze Belgrade's assets in the United States. - NATO missile hits bus at Luzane, north of Pristina. Serb TV reports 39 are killed. NATO later accepts responsibility.

May 2 - Three captive U.S. soldiers freed after visit by U.S. civil rights leader Jesse Jackson. - Serbian state TV says Yugoslav forces down F-16 jet. NATO says plane crashed after engine failure and pilot was rescued, adds that Harrier jump-jet crashed in Adriatic. - Serbia says NATO bombed Yugoslav power stations, cutting power to millions of people. NATO used graphite bomb that short circuits power grid.

May 4 - U.S. fighters shoot down Yugoslav MiG-29 fighter near the border between Serbia and Bosnia.

May 5 - Two U.S. Army pilots are killed when an Apache helicopter crashes on a training mission in Albania. - Macedonia closes the main Blace border crossing with Yugoslavia, leaving thousands stranded. - Kosovo's ethnic Albanian leader Ibrahim Rugova arrives in Rome with the approval of Yugoslav authorities to meet Italian government leaders.

May 6 - The West and Russia agree at Group of Eight meeting in Bonn the beginnings of a strategy to resolve the Kosovo conflict, but NATO rules out immediate bombing halt.

May 7 - Yugoslav officials accuse NATO of bombing hospital and outdoor market in country's third largest city, Nis, killing 22 people and wounding 43. - NATO planes hit the Chinese embassy in Belgrade, killing four and injuring 20.

May 8 - China accuses the United States and NATO of war crimes after what the alliance said was a "terrible accident." - Russian President Boris Yeltsin orders Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov to cancel a planned three-day visit to Britain and condemns what he called the vandalism of NATO's strike. - The U.N. Security Council meets in emergency session and expresses "shock and concern" over casualties at the embassy. - Thousands of students protest at the U.S. embassy in Beijing, smashing windows in an outpouring of fury. - U.S. President Bill Clinton expresses regret to China for the accidental missile attack on the Chinese embassy but says NATO will stay the course in the Kosovo air campaign. - A prominent moderate Albanian Kosovo leader, Fehmi Agani, is found dead near Lipljane village near Pristina on May 7. - Viktor Chernomyrdin meets newly appointed U.N. special envoy Carl Bildt, while German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder and the Russian have separate talks with moderate Kosovo Albanian leader Ibrahim Rugova. - A breakdown in Kosovo talks between the West and Russia following NATO's bombing of the embassy is averted after both sides agree to continue to try to find a diplomatic solution.

May 9 - Chinese students, whipped up by the state media, scream "Kill Americans" in an outpouring of rage over the NATO bombing of China's embassy in Belgrade. They break into the U.S. embassy compound in Beijing and try to tear down the American flag. - NATO says that faulty information led to the targeting of the Chinese embassy in Belgrade in the belief that there was a Yugoslav weapons-buying directorate at that location.

May 10 - The Yugoxlav state-run Tanjug news agency reports the Yugoslav army has announced a partial withdrawal of military and police forces from Kosovo. A statement released by the Yugoslav army said that the troops were being withdrawn now that the "actions against the so-called Kosovo Liberation Army have been concluded." - NATO confrims that the bombing of the Chinese embassy in Belgrade was a C.I.A. blunder. The spy agency admits it used an outdated, seven-year old map of the city. - Lawyers for the Yugoslav government appear before the International Court of Justice in the Hague. Yugoslavia is accusing 10 NATO countries including Canada of illegally attacking a sovereign state.

May 11 - NATO accuses the Serbs of breaking their promise to pull out some troops from Kosovo. The military alliance says not only is there no evidence Serb forces are retreating, it says they're stepping up operations against ethnic Albanian rebels. - Calm begins to return to Beijing's diplomatic district on Tuesday after three days of anti-U.S. protests. - NATO countries tell the International Court of Justice Tuesday that stopping air strikes before there is peace in Kosovo would let Yugoslavia complete its policy of "ethnic cleansing" in the province.