USA bombed a Chinese embassy

The US bombed a Chinese embassy

It was close to midnight and Vlada, a Serbian engineer, was speeding towards his apartment in Belgrade. He had taken his 20-year-old son out that evening but bombs had started to fall across the Yugoslav capital. The power grid was down and he wanted to get home.

Nato, the world's most powerful military alliance, had been pummelling Yugoslavia from the skies since late March to try to bring a halt to atrocities committed by President Slobodan Milosevic's forces against ethnic Albanians in the province of Kosovo. It was now 7 May 1999 and the US-dominated air campaign was only growing more intense.

Vlada's family had spent many nights in recent weeks huddled with others in the basement of their apartment building as air raid sirens blared outside, praying that an errant missile wouldn't strike their homes.

They were lucky, some thought, to live just next to the Chinese embassy - an important diplomatic mission. Being there would surely protect them.

Paul Vernhes and Adrien de St Albin