Reuters: Russian mission in OSCE with fake photos of NATO bombing in Serbia

A 2003 photograph of Baghdad’s night skyline burning after a missile strike has been shared in the tweet from the account of the the Russian Mission to the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE).

The text on Twitter, however, referred to NATO military intervention in the 1999 Kosovo war.

The verified account shared the image on Mars 24 alongside text reading “on 24 March 1999 the US-led NATO commenced its act of illegal and unprovoked aggression against the then Federeal Republic of Yugoslavia wich lasted 78 days”.

The photo used in the tweet can be viewed on Getty images with the caption “Fires burn in and around Saddam Hussein’s Council of Ministers during the firs wave of attacks in the “shocks and awe” phase of “Operation Iraqi Freedom” on MArch 21, 2003 in Baghdad, Iraq”.

The United States led NATO bombing campaign of Serbian forces began in 1999 and was aimed at halting the killing and explusion of ethnis Albanian civilians in Kosovo by troops of the late nationalist president Slobodan Milosevic.

NATO began bombing on March 24 and continued for 78 days until Milosevic agreed to pull his forces from Kosovo and end the killing of Albanian civilians in a fight against the insurgency. Kosovo declared independence in 2008, supported by the United States and most EU countries.

The photo shows events from the 2003 war in Iraq. It is unrelated to the 1999 NATO bombing campaign in Serbia.