ANKARA (AFP) – Three Turks were holed up in their rooms in one of the luxury hotels in Mumbai attacked by Islamist militants, the Anatolia news agency reported yesterday, quoting the Turkish ambassador to India. “There were eight or nine Turkish citizens in the hotel, but most of them saved themselves and are now in a safe area in Mumbai,” Levent Bilman told the agency. “But three of our citizens – a couple and a woman – are still confined in the hotel. They have locked themselves in their rooms,” Bilman said. “We do not know what is happening inside the hotel... We hope the situation ends soon,” he added.

BANJA LUKA (AFP) – Two Bosnian Serbs have received jail terms of up to four years for the killing of four Muslims at the outbreak of Bosnia’s 1992-1995 war, a court said yesterday. Mile Zgonjanin, 49, was sentenced to four years and Nikica Zgonjanin, 59, to three years in prison for the killing in October 1992, an official of the Banja Luka district court said. The victims, two of whom were women, were Zgonjanin’s neighbors in the northwestern town of Novi Grad, also known as Bosanski Novi. The pair of Serbs were accused of tying their victims up with wire, pouring gasoline over them and then setting them on fire, before eventually shooting them dead, the official said.

SOFIA (AFP) – Thirty-seven top managers at Bulgaria’s state television BNT were agents of the communist-era secret services, a committee charged with opening secret archives said Wednesday. The committee posted on its website the names of 37 directors, editors-in-chief and other top officials who had worked as spies for the notorious Darzhavna Sigurnost. It had found six other BNT officials who had worked for the intelligence services but could not announce their names as they were still active agents. Most of the people on the list worked for the political police, spying on work colleagues, the committee said. In October, it announced that four out of nine directors as well as 17 editors-in-chief at the state BTA news agency had collaborated with the communist intelligence services.

Turkey yesterday welcomed the Iraqi parliament’s approval of a military pact that will see all US troops withdraw from the war-torn neighboring country by the end of 2011. “We hope that this agreement, an historic turning point in the restoration of Iraq’s full sovereignty, will help bring peace, security and stability in Iraq,” a foreign ministry statement said. (AFP)

Croatia will open special courts to deal with organized crime and corruption early next year, a top judge in Zagreb, the scene of a series of recent mafia-style slayings, said yesterday. “The courts will be formed and will start working in January,” Branko Hrvatin, the president of Croatia’s Supreme Court, told journalists. Special departments to deal with organized crime cases are to be set up at county courts in the capital Zagreb and three other major towns – Osijek, Rijeka and Split. Potential judges are currently undergoing security checks before 61 of them are assigned to the courts, Hrvatin said. Justice Minister Ivan Simonovic labeled the special courts as the “top of a pyramid” in the fight against organized crime and corruption, stressing “2009 will be the year of action.” (AFP)

The Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia (FYROM) yesterday unveiled a series of measures worth 330 million euros (425 million dollars) in a bid to cope with the economic fallout from the global financial crisis. “Macedonia is not in recession but our trade partners worldwide are, so these measures are preventive ones for our economy,” Prime Minister Nikola Gruevski told reporters. The measures included steps to ease the burden of the crisis on local companies, as well as cuts to taxes and customs charges for importing raw materials, Gruevski said. “We believe this will improve the liquidity of companies,” Deputy Prime Minister Zoran Stavrevski said. (AFP)

Police say Kurdish rebels armed with assault rifles have killed two policemen and wounded four people in southern Turkey on the 30th anniversary of the founding of a Kurdish guerrilla organization. Police say three rebels in a car fired on the policemen at a checkpoint near the city of Iskenderun yesterday. The attack killed two policemen and wounded a third. (AP)