The weekend bombing of the Chinese embassy in Belgrade is only the latest in a growing list of alliance blunders by the North Atlantic Tready Organisation in its six-week air campaign against the military apparatus of President Slobodan Milosevic.
The following is a chronology of civilian deaths and accidental hits on non-military targets:
April 5th: Seventeen people died in an air raid on Aleksinac, 200 kms south of Belgrade, according to Tanjug, the official Yugoslav news agency, when a 250 kilogramme laser-guided bomb missed its target and fell on a residential area. The Pentagon said a US aircraft was responsible.
April 9th: NATO admitted hitting civilian homes in a strike on a telephone exchange in Pristina, regretting "unintended damage or loss of civilian life" when a bomb struck "some 200 to 300 metres from the target". No precise death toll was given.
April 12th: Some 55 passengers died, according to Belgrade, when two missiles were fired at a railway bridge at Grdelica Klisura, some 300 kms south of Belgrade, as a train was crossing. A NATO spokesman said the bridge was part of a crucial supply line for Serb forces in Kosovo.
April 14th: The Yugoslav authorities accused NATO of killing 75 people and injuring 25 others in strikes on two refugee columns near Djakovica, in south-western Kosovo. On April 19th, NATO said it was attempting to neutralise military vehicles and admitted targeting two convoys but did not confirm civilian losses.
April 23rd: At least 10 people were killed in deliberate NATO attack on Serbian state television building in central Belgrade. NATO defended the attack by saying the station was a propaganda tool and therefore an instrument of Milosevic regime.
April 28th: NATO admitted it had mistakenly bombed a residential area at Surdulica, 250 kms south of Belgrade, during an attack on an army barracks. Serbian media report around 20 deaths. NATO said a missile overshot its target. In Bulgaria, a stray NATO HARM missile wrecked a house in Sofia suburb of Gorna Banya, some 60 kms from Yugoslavia, but caused no injuries.
May 1st: NATO hit a bus, the Nis Express, crossing a bridge at Luzane, north of Pristina, causing 47 deaths among the passengers, according to Serbian officials. NATO said the bus appeared after an attacking aircraft released its weapon against the bridge, which it described as being on a key military communications route.
May 7th: In Bulgaria, a NATO anti-radar missile exploded just outside a village some 20 kms west of Sofia. There were no casualties. This was the fifth NATO missile to hit Bulgaria since NATO air raids against Yugoslavia began on March 24th.
NATO admitted it was "highly probable" that a cluster bomb went astray and hit civilian buildings at Nis, killing 15 and injuring up to 70 others, according to Tanjug. A few hours later, a precision guided missile slammed into the side of the Chinese embassy in Belgrade, killing four people and injuring about 20 others. NATO blamed faulty intelligence suggesting the building was a weapons procurement centre.
NATO has disclaimed responsibility for the destruction of a bus during a raid near Pec, in Kosovo, on May 3rd in which 17 people were killed, according to Serbian sources.