ANKARA (AFP) – Three more people have perished in floods that hit eastern and southeastern Turkey this week, bringing the toll to 13, officials and media reports said yesterday. A mother and son were swept away by the waters in the village of Kalkanli in the southeastern province of Bitlis late Thursday while they were trying to save furniture from their inundated house, the Anatolia news agency said. The toll was an update from a previous count of 12 dead.

BRUSSELS (AFP) – EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana called yesterday for the capture of all remaining war crimes indictees in the Balkans, after a key fugitive was caught in Bosnia near the Serbian border. In a statement from his Brussels office, Solana welcomed the arrest of Bosnian-Serb general Zdravko Tolimir, noting that it was the first time Bosnian-Serb police had been involved in the capture of an indictee. “He calls on all the authorities concerned to take decisive action to ensure that the remaining fugitives, notably Radovan Karadzic and Ratko Mladic, are also swiftly brought to justice.”

Families of the victims of the 1995 Srebrenica massacre in Bosnia will sue the Dutch state and the United Nations, which they blame in part for allowing the killings to happen, lawyers said yesterday. The law firm representing a group of about 6,000 family members said it would file a civil suit in the Netherlands on Monday. “In the past three years, a strong case has been built against the Dutch state and the United Nations, who are held to be partially responsible for the fall of the enclave and the genocide that followed,” law firm Van Diepen Van der Kroef said in a statement. (Reuters)

Bosnian police have arrested three people in the eastern town of Foca on suspicion of having helped a Bosnian-Serb war criminal escape from jail, police said yesterday. Radovan Stankovic, serving a 20-year term for rape, enslavement and torture of civilians during Bosnia’s 1992-95 war, faked a toothache last week and asked to see a dentist, then escaped guards escorting him and jumped into a waiting car. (Reuters)