Artillery support:  Albania 25 killed, 126 wounded[9] Wartime events Aftermath Aspects The Battle of Pashtrik (Serbian Cyrillic: Битка на Паштрику, romanized: Bitka na Paštriku, Albanian: Beteja e Pashtrikut) was a two-week confrontation between the KLA with NATO's support against the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia in 1999, during the Kosovo War.

The KLA took over the villages of Planeja, Bucare and Ljumbarda and a stretch of the border area northwest of Prizren,[13][7] but was unable to make further gains by the time of the Kumanovo Agreement on 9 June,[14] which resulted in Yugoslav troops withdrawing from Kosovo.

[15] The terrain between Kosovo and Albania which is mountainous only allows a few passages, the Yugoslav army sought to create defensive chain which they believed would repel a ground attack by the KLA.

The Pashtrik area was particularly vulnerable if attacked by light infantry; the Yugoslav army was aware of this and established a series of watchtowers and observation posts at strategic points near the Albanian border.

These scenarios and media reports have been assessed as unrealistic as the KLA could have captured Prizren only under prolonged ground attacks and air strikes.

[17] The political goals of the KLA were not to secure a military victory but to put the 549th under fire and send a message that this was a prelude to a much larger NATO ground invasion.

Despite extensive use of NATO air strikes, they did little to stop Yugoslav artillery from attacking KLA supply lines within Albania.

NATO fearing Milošević would get a better position at the negotiating table if they recaptured the gains made by the KLA stepped up their bombing campaign.

The Washington Post Foreign Service, which also claim that the strike involved the use of cluster munition, put the toll in "several hundreds".

[26] Despite the failure of the KLA to reach its operational objective, it has been regarded as one of the most important factors in Slobodan Milošević's decision to sign the Kumanovo Treaty.