MITROVICA (Reuters) - NATO peacekeepers in Kosovo’s divided city of Mitrovica yesterday removed checkpoints and barricades from a notorious bridge that has been one of the most volatile flashpoints in the Balkans. French soldiers drove away two armored personnel carriers (APCs), dismantled 2-meter-high sandbag barricades and packed away makeshift huts erected across the bridge following ethnic Albanian riots last year. A single French patrol of 20 soldiers and two APCs will remain to back up a small United Nations police contingent plus Serb and Albanian members of the local Kosovo Police Service.

ISTANBUL (AP) - Prosecutors yesterday asked for a suspected Islamic militant to be sentenced to life in prison for planning to crash an airplane into the mausoleum of secular Turkey’s founder, a news agency reported. Prosecutors told a court in Istanbul that Metin Kaplan was behind an “armed attempt to overturn the constitutional order” — a charge that amounts to treason, the Anatolia news agency reported. Kaplan rejected the accusation on the second day of his trial, saying neither he nor his group, the Caliphate State, were terrorists, the agency reported. Trial was adjourned until May 30.

Nine Kurdish rebels and a Turkish soldier have been killed in the past five days in fighting in mainly Kurdish southeastern Turkey, officials said yesterday. The clash erupted when a group of members of the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), also known as KONGRA-GEL, was surrounded by soldiers in mountains in the province of Sirnak during a security operation, the office of the local governor said. (AFP)

Albanian police have arrested five people and seized a large quantity of explosives in an operation against arms trafficking between Albania and Serbia-Montenegro, officials said yesterday. “Four Albanians and one Montenegrin were arrested during this joint operation with the Montenegrin police,” police spokesman Florian Seriani told reporters. (AFP)

Italian troops began arriving in Sarajevo yesterday to take part in an exercise aimed at training European Union troops to respond to security emergencies in Bosnia, the EU Force in Sarajevo said. Some 550 troops from the Italian Alpini Regiment, based near Turin, Italy, are to take part in the exercise. (AP)