WASHINGTON – Serb TV early today showed pictures of three American soldiers it said its forces captured near the Macedonian border.
The men were identified as Sergeants James Stone and Andrew Ramirez and Specialist Steven Gonzalez.
The reports offered no information about how they were captured.
The pictures of the men, all in camouflage uniform, were broadcast by CNN starting at about 2 a.m.
They had blood on their faces and were speaking to someone off-camera. The Serb report said they were beaten when they resisted arrest.
NATO officials said they got their first word of the reported capture from TV.
But they did not officially confirm that the three were the Americans who had disappeared after reporting their patrol had been fired on.
Serbia claimed the men had been on its territory. NATO insists they had been on the Macedonian side of the border.
The initial gunfire marked the first ground encounter between U.S. and Serbian forces since NATO bombing raids began March 24.
The GIs had been taking part in the U.N. peacekeeping effort set up several years ago to keep Serbian aggression from penetrating into independent Macedonia.
Officials said the GIs were riding in a Humvee vehicle on a reconnaissance patrol along a civilian road in the Kumanovo region of Macedonia.
They were believed to be about three miles from the Yugoslav border when they were separated from their convoy.
At about 3 p.m. (8 a.m. New York time), the soldiers radioed that they were under “small arms fire” and “surrounded.”
“No more was heard from the patrol,” a NATO statement said.
The soldiers did not say who attacked them, but the Pentagon said it was apparently the Serbian army or paramilitary forces.
Searchers, including about 90 soldiers in helicopters, found no trace of the Humvee or the soldiers, members of the 4th Cavalry Regiment of the 1st Infantry Division, as of early today.
The reported capture of the Americans came as bombing raids against the Serbs inched closer to the capital city of Belgrade.
NATO claimed it hit a Serbian special-forces building, just outside downtown Belgrade, home to 1.4 million and the heart of the military and strategic wing of the Serbian force.
In another development The Washington Post reported that CIA Director George Tenet warned President Clinton weeks ago that bombing raids might result in the Serbs speeding up their “ethnic cleansing” campaign.
The paper added that U.S. military leaders warned that if this happened, air power alone could not stop it.
Meanwhile, Pope John Paul II said he would dispatch a peace delegation today and urged an Easter cease-fire.
Asked last night by CBS anchor Dan Rather whether it would be “obscene” to bomb during Easter and Passover, Clinton replied: “We are acting in defense of the defenseless.
“We are acting at a time when [Serbian leader Slobodan Milosevic] is going through the country killing people … trying to destroy records of what their land holdings are, trying to eradicate any historical record of their claim to their land.”
Questioned about plans to zero in on targets in central Belgrade, he said: “It is accurate that we are attacking targets that we believe will achieve our stated objective.”
Clinton also said it was still his “intention” not to send ground troops to Kosovo because of “the prospect of never being able to get them out.”
Rather asked if Clinton’s use of “intention” means he may change his mind.
Clinton replied: “It means just what it says. I have used those words carefully.”
Clinton today heads to Norfolk Naval Air Station in Virginia to meet military families privately and then speak about the need for the U.S. raids.
Russia yesterday signaled its anger over the military campaign by pressing forward with plans to dispatch seven warships from the Black Sea through the Bosporus and into the Mediterranean – where five U.S. ships and a submarine are standing by.
State Department spokesman James Rubin said, “We are obviously concerned by the signal such a large deployment might send to Belgrade.”
To cope with the rising tide of refugees, the White House said it would release $50 million in humanitarian aid for more than 100,000 ethnic Albanians who fled Kosovo and what Pentagon spokesman Ken Bacon called “a murder machine.”