It is estimated that some 700,000 Kosovars were expelled from their homeland during that period, and that some 11,000 people died as a result of the fighting. The latter figure, although appalling in human terms, is far lower than the estimates issued by Nato and the US State Department during the war to justify the Nato air offensive aimed at ending Serbian military action. They claimed hundreds of thousands of Kosovar men had gone missing during a campaign of ethnic cleansing instituted by the Serbs.