I hear they're preparing to attack Normandy any day now....
Posted on 10/06/2004 10:08:38 AM PDT by 11th_VA
STANOVC, Serbia and Montenegro, Oct 6 (Reuters) - Hundreds of French troops parachuted into Kosovo on Wednesday in the first major operational drop by the French military since intervention in Zaire in 1978.
The mid-morning calm in open meadows north of the U.N.-governed province's capital, Pristina, was shattered by the thunder of seven Transall C-160 planes arriving at the end of a five-hour flight from bases in France.
Arching low over cornfields, they emptied their human cargo, filling the skies with the dirty-white canopies of 361 French paratroopers, each with combat rifle and 50 kg of equipment strapped to his back.
The units included marines, signals, a medical team and an Air Force squadron.
Their 200-metre (600-feet) jump into a drop zone guarded by Moroccan troops marked the start of a 2,000-strong reinforcement of the NATO-led KFOR peacekeeping force ahead of a general election in Kosovo on Oct. 23.
"It was an excellent drop," remarked a breathless Corporal David Suzanne, the sloping fields around him dotted with soldiers lumbering to their collection point.
A KFOR spokesman said it was France's first large airborne operation since 1978, when French paratroopers were deployed in war-torn Zaire in Central Africa.
"For the French army it's a very important operation," said Colonel Yves Kermervant.
German and Italian troops will deploy to Kosovo by land from Albania and Greece over the coming week, as part of KFOR's one-month reinforcement, a precaution triggered by ethnic riots in March in which Albanian mobs attacked minority Serb enclaves.
That spasm of violence, resulting in 19 deaths and 800 homes damaged or destroyed, caught NATO and Kosovo's United Nations administration by surprise. The alliance rushed 2,000 extra troops to the province, but it was after the fact and criticism was stinging.
"We're here so the elections can go ahead in a safe environment," said the paras' commanding officer, Captain Eric Dinechen.
"This demonstrates that Kosovo is still an operational theatre," said another French officer, who asked not to be named.
The deployment will temporarily raise the total strength of the five-year-old peacekeeping mission to 20,000.
Ethnic Albanians make up over 90 percent of Kosovo's two million population and are virtually unanimous in their demand for independence from Serbia.
The issue of the province's final status is expected to come to a head in mid-2005 for the United Nations and the major Western powers which authorised NATO's military intervention in 1999 to stop Serb repression of Albanians.
((Writing by Douglas Hamilton; Editing by Janet Lawrence))
Were they caught by surprise that practitioners of the "Religion of Peace" would murder innocent civilians? Yeah, that comes as a real shock, not like that's ever happened before.
They mus've thought something was wrong with their airplane.
Did they surrender yet???
LOL .. I kept checking for the date thinking .. this has got to be an old article
Are they there to teach a class on how to surrender or just to serve some whine and cheese?
Kosovo is a QUAGMIRE! Didn't we intervene in 1999? It's been six years and they have to send reinforcments to hold *GASP* elections?
It's even under Reuters ALERTNET !!!
I hear they're preparing to attack Normandy any day now....
The French have just discovered anti-gravity!
(Their paratroopers, you see, were afraid to hit the ground -- so they just hover there....)
"That spasm of violence, resulting in 19 deaths and 800 homes damaged or destroyed, caught NATO and Kosovo's United Nations administration by surprise. "
France has INVADED a country over 19 deaths *snicker*? Gosh the 100,000's in Iraq posted no French concerns.
....How many soldiers will this war COST France. Oh, woe is us! *sniff* The caskets, oh the caskets.....
/Sarcasm off*
"We're here so the elections can go ahead in a safe environment," said the paras' commanding officer, Captain Eric Dinechen."
Seems I've heard something like that somewhere...oh, yeah. Bush, Iraq.
They did that as soon as they hit the ground sniveling...
you beat me by 67 seconds
I thought a French Airborne Divison was involved in Operation Desert Storm
Pehaps they were just flying around in helicopters in 1991,
-before they switched to Saddam's side in Operation Iraqi Freedom.
It also speaks to the numbers they can put in the field.
If some unnamed person should think these guys could contribute any significant numbers to a coalition effort that person would be deluded. Or a liar.
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