Civil defense sirens sounded the all clear in Belgrade at noon on March 24, the 11th anniversary of the beginning of NATO's bombing of the former Federal Republic of Yugoslavia.

The date is marked as Remembrance Day for the victims of the NATO attack.

Interior Minister Ivica Dacic laid a wreath at the Strazevica Hill Monument in Belgrade's Rakovica municipality, erected in honor of slain members of the Yugoslav Army.

Dacic subsequently told reporters that the 1999 air raids should not be forgotten and ought to serve as a lesson for the future.

Belgrade City Assembly head Aleksandar Antic said he has no qualms about qualifying the NATO bombing as a crime against FRY citizens, and recalled the numerous victims and damage that the country sustained in 1999.

Addressing family members of the victims, military personnel and elementary school students from Rakovica, Col. Aleksandar Jelic, commander of the 210th Communications Battalion, recalled that servicemen Vladimir Vujovic and Vlastimir Lazarevic were killed there by a NATO missile on March 27, 1999 while repairing the antenna system.

In the 78 days of war, he said, NATO targeted the air force's subterranean command center at Strazevica 34 times, and that the air force lost 41 personnel, from privates to generals.

Belgrade Mayor Dragan Djilas, Serbian Broadcasting Corporation general manager Aleksandar Tijanic and the family members of 16 Serbian Broadcasting Corporation employees killed when the SBC headquarters was bombed, brought flowers to the Why Memorial in Tasmajdan Park.

On behalf of families of the victims, Zanka Stojanovic, mother of victim Nebojsa Stojanovic, said the day was the 11th anniversary of "pain and fighting for the state to admit the truth, because it killed 16 people."