YUGOSLAVIA: KOSOVO CRISIS: NATO TROOPS ENTER KOSOVO

(12 Jun 1999) Natural Sound

Operation Joint Guardian began with the dim of helicopters, as British paratroopers headed out to secure the high ground.

Then on a general's signal at dawn, thousands of NATO troops with tanks and armoured vehicles rolled into Kosovo in the largest military operation in the alliance's history.

Hundreds of Kosovo Albanian refugees, who fled into Macedonia at the crossing point, cheered and shouted "NATO! NATO!" as the convoy passed.

British and French troops were spear heading the initial NATO thrust, with German, U-S and Italian forces due to move in later.

Hundreds of British airborne troops, including the elite Gurkha rifle regiment, moved in at dawn by air and on foot from Macedonia to secure the hillsides and the main road leading north to the Kosovo capital Pristina.

U-S Apache attack helicopters, transferred from Albania, skirted the hilltops to protect the convoy from attack.

The massive NATO operation - including U-S, British, French, German and Italian troops - began hours after Russian forces moved unexpectedly into the Kosovo capital, Pristina.

Local Serbs welcomed the Russian forces as heroes sent to protect them from feared retribution by Kosovo's ethnic Albanians.

A column of jeeps packed with more than 150 Gurkhas - elite Nepalese infantrymen who serve in the British army - were amongst the first to begin crossing the border.

Hundreds of other Gurkhas marched alongside the slow-moving convoy.

Several buildings in the area had been set fire by Serb troops as they withdrew under terms of the international peace plan.

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