On April 12, 1999, NATO airstrikes struck a railway bridge in Grdelica, hitting a passenger train on the Niš - Preševo line. According to Večernje Novosti, 15 of the killed civilians were identified, a large number of passengers were classified as "missing".[14] The Leskovac city board forbade medical workers and doctors to give information to journalists on collected remains of killed civilians, preventing a more complete record of civilian casualties from taking place.[15] Human Rights Watch listed the names of 12 passengers killed in Grdelica, although reported that 20 civilians were killed in total.[16] Yugoslavia's Tanjug reported about 50 passengers killed,[16] whereas the Belgrade government recorded 55.[17] In a commemorative gathering held on April 12, 2017, Miodrag Poledica, Serbia's Minister of Construction, Transport, and Infrastructure, asserted that "the exact number of those killed was never determined, but it's assumed that there were more than fifty."[18]