CHINA: YUGOSLAVIA: PROTEST AT US EMBASSY OVER NATO BOMBING

Описание: (8 May 1999) Natural Sound

Several thousand students marched to the U-S Embassy in Beijing on Saturday to protest the NATO missile bombing of the Chinese embassy in Yugoslavia.

The main building was pelted with rocks as the protests became increasingly destructive.

The demonstrators accused NATO of intentionally targeting the Chinese embassy in Belgrade.

NATO strenuously denies the allegation.

The U-S embassy in Beijing was the focus of Saturday's protests.

Chinese students gathered in numbers not seen since the Tiananmen Square pro-democracy protests almost ten years ago.

But this time their anger was aimed at NATO for its bombing of the Chinese embassy in Belgrade.

Serb media reports say at least four people were killed and more than 20 were injured when NATO a missile struck the Chinese embassy in Belgrade on Friday night.

NATO admitted on Saturday that it had targetted the wrong building in the attack and expressed its regret over the accident.

Beijing has strongly opposed the NATO air strikes in Yugoslavia since they started.

Meanwhile, the Chinese Foreign Ministry summoned U-S Ambassador, James Sasser, and lodged the "strongest protest" over the incident.

China also called an emergency meeting of the United Nations Security Council overnight to condemn the attack.

In response, the American embassy advised its staff and Americans living in the Chinese capital to be particularly cautious in case of any acts of retaliation.

Some protesters angrily shouted for U-S President Bill Clinton to resign.

A cheer of "Hao," meaning "Bravo," went up whenever a plastic water bottle or piece of pavement landed on the embassy building.

Lamps on the gate and some windows were smashed during the day.

A U-S official walked out of the embassy in Beijing several times to receive protest statements from the demonstrators.

He expressed sympathy and condolences for those killed in the missile attack in Belgrade.

The demonstrators included groups from Peking University and People's University.

The two schools were at the forefront of the Tiananmen Square demonstrations in the spring of 1989 that were crushed in the June military assault.

Since Tiananmen, no large student protests have been allowed in China.

On Saturday night, yet more protesters mobbed the embassy.

An American flag was set alight and protesters tried to throw it through the embassy gate.

More than one thousand demonstrators attacked the compound with rocks.

Embassy cars were smashed and protesters scuffled with hundreds of police officers.

Protesters broke windows with pieces of concrete that had been left in piles to rebuild Beijing sidewalks.

A group of protesters tried to set a car on fire and started shoving police who stopped them.

Eventually, a police line managed to push back the protesters.

At the U-S ambassador's residence in Beijing there were similar protests.

An angry mob shouted anti-U-S slogans and called for the ambassador to be killed.

However, this protest wasn't as destructive as the one nearby at the embassy.

Police were out in force to make sure the crowd's threats came to nothing.

China's government generally bans any large demonstrations for fear that protests could boil over into unrest.

But on Saturday, anger over the Belgrade embassy attack appeared be permeating both the Government and students.

Saturday's protest was broadcast on China's state-run television showing student demonstrators marching and shouting slogans.

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