BELGRADE, April 7. /TASS/. The US strike against Syria is reminiscent of the Americans’ actions in Yugoslavia in the late 1990s, leader of the Serbian Radical Party, Vojislav Seselj, told TASS on Friday.

"The Americans’ behavior deserves condemnation. It is illegal and not based on the UN Security Council’s decision. It is very similar to the actions by the Clinton-era administration and its successors," the politician said when asked whether the current aggression is reminiscent of the situation in Yugoslavia in 1999.

In his view, the United States it doing its utmost to deepen the global crisis. "All the Americans seek to do is to complicate relations in the modern world and deepen the crisis. As far as Syria goes, they have no intention of destroying the Islamic State (IS, terror group, outlawed in Russia - TASS). They would be happy, if IS controlled Syria rather than Assad’s government," Seselj explained. Eradicating the Islamic State is not a priority for the US at all. It only seeks to topple Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, the Serbian politician emphasized.

March 24, 2017, marked 18 years since the beginning of NATO’s military offensive against Yugoslavia, which was not authorized by the UN. During the campaign that had lasted 78 days, the alliance’s aircraft carried out 38,000 sorties, more than 10,000 of them were bombing raids. A total of 3,000 cruise missiles were fired and about 80,000 bombs dropped, including cluster bombs and explosives containing depleted uranium. Around 1,000 warplanes took part in the operation. According to Serbian data, NATO’s bombing raids claimed the lives of up to 4,000 people, about 10,000 people were wounded, two-thirds of them were civilians. The material damage amounted to $100 bln.

The US military fired 59 Tomahawk cruise missiles at a military airfield in Syria’s Homs province overnight to Friday on orders issued by US President Donald Trump. The strike came in response to what Washington claims was Damascus’ use of chemical weapons in the Idlib province. The Pentagon said the alleged chemical attack was launched from this airfield. However, according the Russian Defense Ministry, on April 4, the Syrian air force delivered an airstrike on the eastern outskirts of Khan Sheikhoun to destroy militant facilities used to produce chemical bombs. These bombs were sent to Iraq and were also used in Aleppo.