Serbia on Monday marked the ninth anniversary of the start of the 78-day NATO bombing campaign against its predecessor the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia with a number of commemorative events.

Serbian President Boris Tadic laid flowers at the monument to the children killed during the 1999 NATO bombing of Belgrade.

"We shall never forget those tragic days, and for the sake of our children's future we must not allow something like that to happen again," said Tadic in a statement.

Serbian Prime Minister Vojislav Kostunica said the brutal destruction of Serbia had the goal of creating the first NATO state in the territory of Kosovo.

"The illegal construction of the huge American military base Bondsteel and Annex 11 of the Ahtisaari plan, which establishes NATO as the supreme organ of government in Kosovo, reveal the reason why Serbia was mindlessly destroyed, and why a NATO state was declared illegally on February 17," Kostunica said in a statement issued Sunday night.

Serbian Defense Minister Dragan Sutanovac said Monday that the NATO decision to launch air strikes on Yugoslavia in 1999 will remain recorded as the blackest decision in the modern-day history of that military alliance and of Serbia.

At the Serbian Air Force and Air Defense Command, Sutanovac met with pilots who were the first to stand in defense of the country nine years ago, but who also recorded the first casualties in the attack by the much superior NATO forces.

"It was my wish, on the anniversary of perhaps the saddest day in the contemporary history of our nation when we showed that we do not understand the world and that the world understands us even less, to meet the courageous pilots who formed the first bulwark of defense of the fatherland," Sutanovac said.

Colonel Nebojsa Djukanovic, former commander of the 127th aviation fighter squadron, which was the first to respond to the enemy attack, said they had carried out 15 sorties in MiG 29s at that time.

Two pilots were killed on that occasion, the colonel said.

Leading officials of Belgrade, and representatives of political parties and veteran associations commemorated the anniversary by laying wreaths at selected monuments and paying tribute to the victims.

Acting Mayor of Belgrade Zoran Alimpic laid a wreath at the monument to Serbian Radio Television (RTS) employees killed at their place of work during the NATO campaign.

Two hours after midnight on April 23, 1999, bombs hit the RTS building in central Belgrade, killing 16 employees and inflicting grave injuries on four others.

"This is yet another anniversary of the bombardment of Serbia, and in Belgrade we are marking that day by laying wreaths at places where our fellow Belgraders were killed," Alimpic said, adding that everyone should "do everything so that such things are not repeated ever again."

Radmila Hrustanovic, assistant acting mayor of Belgrade, laid a wreath at the grave of Milica Rakic at the Batajnica Cemetery. Milica was three years old when she was killed in her home by a piece of shrapnel from a NATO bomb dropped on Belgrade's northern suburb of Batajnica.

Hrustanovic laid another wreath at a monument dedicated to the members of the Air Defense killed while defending Belgrade.

Belgrade Assembly Deputy President Milorad Perovic laid a wreath at a memorial for seven Guard Brigade members and three patients killed by a bomb that hit the Dr. Dragisa Misovic Clinical and Hospital Center of Belgrade.

Representatives of the Association of 1990s War Veterans, the Socialist Party of Serbia (SPS), and the Belgrade Municipality of Rakovica laid wreaths at a monument for the dead on Strazevica Hill, southern Belgrade.

A commemoration for all victims of the NATO air campaign was held at the Church of Saint Mark in central Belgrade. Prime Minister Kostunica and several ministers attended the memorial service.

Belgrade was attacked on the very first day of the NATO intervention, on March 24, 1999, with bombs dropped on the suburb of Jakovo and on the airfield in Batajnica.

After the bombing campaign, which killed some 3,500 people, an international protectorate was introduced in Kosovo, whose provisional institutions unilaterally declared independence in February this year.

(Xinhua News Agency March 25, 2008)