Fact check
Is it true: Belgrade Chinese embassy NATO bombing (7 May 1999)?
There's no solid evidence for it.
The claim is that NATO deliberately bombed the Chinese embassy in Belgrade on 7 May 1999 and that the 'outdated map' explanation was a cover story. The strike and the deaths of three Chinese journalists are documented, and the official account has real gaps, but the deliberate-targeting claim rests on anonymous sources in the Observer's October 1999 investigation (with Politiken) and its November follow-up, and no document or on-the-record account has confirmed it. A 2000 New York Times reconstruction found no evidence of a deliberate act, the CIA fired one employee and disciplined six others over the error, and the ICTY prosecutor's review committee treated the embassy as mistakenly hit. All three draw heavily on US accounts, so the claim is unsubstantiated rather than disproved.
The claim
The US-led NATO bombing of the Chinese embassy in Belgrade on 7 May 1999 was deliberate rather than an accident: the embassy was knowingly targeted, reportedly because NATO had detected it relaying Yugoslav army communications, and the official explanation (a CIA targeting error based on outdated maps) was a cover story. The Observer and Politiken made this case in October 1999, and China's government has rejected the accident explanation.
Key evidence
The Observer (Oct 1999): deliberate targeting based on SIGINT relay
CIA Director Tenet apologised to Congress for targeting error
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