The 78-day long NATO aggression against Yugoslavia began on March 24, 1999, becoming the first armed attack on a sovereign European state after 1945. The air strikes killed over 2,000 civilians, including 89 children, and wounded many thousands more. Thousands of civilian facilities were destroyed in dozens of cities, and the Kosovo Autonomous Province was forcibly separated from the country. Today, Kosovo is the main source of Balkan instability and crises.