ANKARA (AP) – Turkish warplanes bombed a Kurdish rebel hideout in northern Iraq yesterday – the third air strike in as many days in retaliation for an attack that killed 15 soldiers. The military said its warplanes bombed the Avasin Basyan region of northern Iraq after spotting a group of rebels. Turkey stepped up its military activity after 15 soldiers and at least 23 insurgents were killed Friday in the fiercest battle between Turkish troops and Kurdish rebels in eight months. Another 20 soldiers were wounded. Two soldiers have been reported missing and are believed to be dead, the military has said. Turkish fighter jets had struck suspected rebel hideouts in northern Iraq on Friday and Saturday. And Turkish artillery units pounded suspected rebel positions in the Avasin Basyan region Sunday, the military statement said. In northern Iraq, a rebel spokesman said the Kurdistan Workers’ Party, or PKK, had suffered no casualties in the latest attack. “There are no PKK personnel here in this area that was bombed so we have no casualties among our fighters,” Ahmed Deniz said.

SOFIA (AFP) – A Bulgarian court has banned an Islamic association from operating in the country, accusing it of fanning religious hatred, it was announced yesterday. The Charitable Projects association, which has been active in Bulgaria since the mid-1990s, was banned for “propagating religious hatred against the majority Christian Orthodox Bulgarians and the traditionally Hanif Muslims in the country,” the State Agency for National Security (DANS) said in a statement. The ruling was made by a court in the eastern city of Burgas. The agency added that Charitable Projects was an offspring of the Lebanese Sunni Association of Islamic Charitable Projects, known as the Habashi Movement. Habashi military structures participated in the 1980s civil war in Lebanon, while its members are reported to have been among the attackers of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri when he was assassinated in 2005, the DANS statement said.

NICOSIA (AFP) – A Slovak UN peacekeeper was killed when a Greek-Cypriot police patrol boat severed his arm as he was snorkeling off the coast of the divided island, a United Nations spokesman said yesterday. Lance Corporal Alexander Simkovic, 30, had his right arm severed from the shoulder by a propeller and apparently died from loss of blood before reaching hospital, UN spokesman Jose Diaz told AFP. The accident happened on Sunday while he was snorkeling with another peacekeeper 70 meters off the island’s east coast resort of Paralimni. Cyprus police said the divers failed to place a marker in the area so as to be seen easily. The man killed was coming up to the surface while a routine patrol was taking place.

Former Croatian Serb leader Milan Martic will learn his final judicial fate tomorrow when a UN court rules on his appeal against a war crimes conviction and 35-year sentence. Martic, 53, a one-time close ally of former Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic, held various posts, including president, in Krajina – a region in the northeast of Croatia that unilaterally declared itself a Serb republic in 1991. He was found guilty by the International Criminal Court for the former Yugoslavia in June last year of 16 counts of war crimes and crimes against humanity. The charges included murder, persecution, deportation, torture, destruction of villages and attacks on non-Serb civilians between 1991 and 1995. (AFP)

The Belgrade Stock Exchange plunged by more than 8 percent yesterday to nearly its lowest point ever, while the Serbian currency weakened in an apparent reaction to falls on world markets. The main index – the BELEX-15 – fell by 8.09 percent to close at 896.69, a 78.95-point fall according to the official Internet site. The historic low-point on the Belgrade Stock Exchange was at 890.22. Also yesterday, Serbia’s currency, the dinar, weakened by almost 2 percent to 0.013 euros, or 77.6 dinars to the euro. (AFP)