SARAJEVO (AFP) - Weapons left over from Bosnia’s war have been responsible for the loss of some 10,000 lives in the country since the conflict ended more than a decade ago, an official said yesterday. “Around 10,000 people have either been killed or committed suicide by light weapons in Bosnia over the last 10 years, which is a terrifying toll,” Adem Huskic, a member of a Bosnian parliamentary commission for defence and safety, told local newspapers. The official said there was still an estimated 350,000 tons of surplus ammunition in Bosnia that would take more than 20 years to eradicate.

SARAJEVO (AFP) - Chief UN war crimes prosecutor Carla Del Ponte said she has proof the international community knew in advance about the Srebrenica massacre in an interview in Wednesday’s Paris Match magazine. The top magistrate said she had received the minutes of a meeting from “an indirect source” which proved that foreign officials “knew about it, that they had talked about it and that they did nothing to prevent it... They had accepted the separation of men and women... they knew they were going to kill them.” Slobodan Milosevic’s death in custody prevented the contents from being aired in court.

Security guards in Turkey yesterday detained a man who fired shots into the air outside the Italian consul general’s residence to protest an upcoming visit by Pope Benedict XVI. The man had tossed his gun into the garden of the Istanbul residence after allegedly firing the shots. “I am happy to be a Muslim,” the protester shouted as he was detained. (AP)

Bulgaria decided yesterday to ban arms and ammunition sales to Lebanon after similar measures were taken by the UN Security Council and the EU, which the Balkan country will join in January. Bulgaria exported to the Arab country arms worth about 120 million euros (US$152 million) in 2005. (AP)

The German federal court of justice yesterday rejected a new attempt by a group of Serbs to claim damages for Germany’s part in the 1999 NATO bombing of a bridge during the Kosovo conflict. A German appeals court threw out the case in 2004, but the 35 plaintiffs took their claim for 536,000 euros (684,000 dollars) to the federal level. The judges said individual victims of military action had no right to reparations under international or German law. (AFP)