BELGRADE, APRIL 23, 1999 -

I have to write this fast. There is heavy anti-aircraft fire and explosions. By the sound of it, it is quite near -- it must be an attack on one of Belgrade's bridges. It is now 4:40 a.m. in Belgrade. There is a very strong stench in the air -- I guess from the anti-aircraft shelling. Electricity is still working here in the center, though there are visible changes in the voltage.

Tonight NATO bombed five TV-repeater antennas located throughout Serbia. Two hours ago, massive strikes leveled the central building of the Serbian National Broadcasting Company, RTS.

I have just seen unedited footage on one of Belgrade's two remaining television stations. The complex of buildings housing RTS has been leveled to the ground. There are casualties, but no one knows how many yet. Firefighters and emergency-rescue crews have been trying to clear rubble and to get into the parts of the building that have caved in. RTS's program ran 24 hours a day, so the building was full of people. Even at this early-morning hour, there must have been at least a hundred people at work.

A part of the building is still standing with one whole wall blown away. The lighting inside is still working. It's an amazing picture. I can see three stories of office space, clearly lighted, with dozens of people huddled and staring through what once was a wall. Even some of the furniture in the offices is visible -- everything looks normal, only the whole wall is missing, like those doll houses that have only three walls.

Ambulances are intermingled with rescue and bulldozer crews. There are people being given I.V. infusions of some sort. The courtyard in front of the main building is littered with mangled satellite dishes and various kinds of debris. Strangely, a tall tower holding many different antennas is still standing, although it seems to have been near the center of the explosion.

It is quite possible that some of the many foreign journalists staying in Belgrade had been in the building, either editing material or sending it off via satellite. One journalist from Austria (I don't remember his name) gave an interview yesterday after the bombing of a skyscraper housing the studios of two other Belgrade TV stations and the main antenna facility for a third TV station and several radio stations. In the interview, he said that the blatant bombing of media locations shocked him as a journalist, and that he would be spending the night in the RTS building.

The RTS complex is next door to the famous children's theater "Dusko Radovic," which is reported to have been heavily damaged. Only a few hundred yards on one side of the complex is Belgrade's beautiful St. Marco cathedral. From what I can see, the explosion was placed in such a way that the back part of the RTS complex shielded the cathedral, but it is hard to be sure. The side that was hit faces one of Belgrade's main avenues. Across the street, as well as on both sides of the RTS complex, are residential buildings. At least ten are within 100 yards of the center of the explosion. I have no information about casualties in or damages to these buildings.

This, combined with the previous days' bombings, has taken most of the TV stations in Belgrade off the air. Yesterday all television and many radio stations in the northern autonomous province of Vojvodina were off the air. From the distribution of the TV-repeater antennas leveled tonight, my guess is that only a few local television stations are working in all of Serbia. All four of the nationwide TV networks have been crippled. The remaining two local stations in Belgrade are both located on top of two large skyscrapers in the downtown business area. Bombing of these two buildings is impossible without unparalleled loss of life.

The destruction of Serbia's television stations is probably the prelude to the felling of Belgrade's bridges. The three largest bridges have thousands of people on them, linking hands and holding candles. The TV picture of the destruction of these bridges and all the people on them can't now easily go out into the world. One of these bridges -- connecting Belgrade with Pancevo -- is now the only bridge left standing over the Danube.

Sometime near 2:30 a.m. a bridge over the Sava, near Ostruznica, was destroyed. At almost the same time, another bridge was destroyed near the city of Krusevac. Another target early this morning was another railway -- I can't remember where.

After the total destruction a couple of days ago of the main satellite ground station near Ivanjica, which carried the brunt of the phone lines to America and Australia, as well as the cutting of optical cables of two major Internet providers, Yugoslavia is near the point of being totally cut off from the world. It is to be expected that the remaining phone and Internet links will be cut soon. After that, CNN and NATO can really start to manufacture history. Oh, brave new world.

-- Alex