Thursday, April 8, 1999 Published at 20:43 GMT 21:43 UK
Pristina - a deserted city
Journalists encountered scenes of destruction in Pristina
On Wednesday, the BBC's World Editor John Simpson was one of a few journalists to be taken by Serbian authorities to the bombed Kosovan capital Pristina.
It was not so much tense as completely empty. We came in through what used to be the ethnic Albanian quarter. The houses were shuttered, the shops empty, their windows either smashed in or broken by explosions.
A big oil depot, which supplied the city's heating system, was still burning fiercely on the hillside, 12 hours after it had been hit. The smoke from it hung over the city.
I was able to walk around freely. There were times when the only sounds were the crows cawing in the trees.
Occasionally down side alleys you could see a few people, Albanians or Serbs or Gypsies hurrying home with a little food for the night.
The Head of the Regional Government, Vejko Odalovic, insisted that most people were still at home and that included ethnic Albanians, he said.
"As you have seen, around us the bombs have caused some displacement of the population. People of all nationalities are leaving, the bombs don't target one specific nationality and so people of all nationalities have been leaving Pristina."
The worst damage was in the city centre. A telecommunications building had taken a direct hit, and round about it other large modern buildings had been badly damaged - a bank, a social security office, and a public library.
But in human terms the worst damage was in a little side street of old houses at the back of the modern development.
The loss of life had been heavy there. Perhaps the worst in the Nato attacks so far.
Many of the local people, Serbs for the most part, were too angry to do anything except shout at us.
One man explained what his life had now become: "It's not easy, we go down to the shelters every night when they bomb us."
The only people I saw a lot of as the evening drew on were the special police from the Ministry of the Interior. They patrol the streets in their camouflage uniforms or man the roadblocks all round the city.
They are increasingly the targets for the Nato attacks and they know it.
As it got on for seven o'clock the officials with us wanted to get on the road away from Pristina. We had been told we would be taken to the hospital to see casualties from the attacks, but instead we were driven briefly to the city's cemetery.
This had taken a stray hit of some kind. Graves were disturbed or destroyed.
The city was an empty shell where the living get out or stay in hiding, and even the dead don't lie in peace.