ANKARA (AFP) – Three people were killed and two others were injured when rocks falling from a hillside crashed through the roof of a nightclub in central Turkey early yesterday, a local official said. The nightclub in the town of Urgup, Nevsehir province, had closed and six employees remained inside when the rockfall took place, Governor Asim Hacimustafaoglu told the Anatolia news agency. “We recovered the bodies of three people and rescued two others. One person managed to get out from under the rubble on his own, with no injuries,” he said. “A big disaster was averted because the rockfall took place early in the morning,” Hacimustafaoglu added.

SOFIA (AFP) – Police chiefs from eight Balkan countries met yesterday in Sofia to discuss how to coordinate their fight against organized crime and drug trafficking, Bulgaria’s top policeman Krassimir Petrov said. “Criminal groups in the Balkans are linked and work together. That is the purpose of the Southeast Europe Police Chiefs Association,” Petrov told a press conference. He invited Greece, Moldova and Turkey to join the organization, which currently includes Albania, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Croatia, the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia (FYROM), Montenegro, Serbia and new EU members Bulgaria and Romania. Police will cooperate especially on drug trafficking, an area where “criminal groups work together the most,” and on the traffic of human beings, weapons and stolen cars, Petrov said, adding that there had been “a drop in drug trafficking via the Balkans in the last few years.”

A group claiming it has arms has threatened to kill the Bosnian-Serb prime minister over a UN court ruling that cleared Serbia of genocide in Bosnia, officials said yesterday. Prime Minister Milorad Dodik received the death threat in a letter sent from the northern Muslim majority town of Tuzla by the group calling itself “Nova BiH,” a spokeswoman for his government said. “We organized a unit of combatants armed with sophisticated equipment... with the aim of blowing up (Dodik’s) motorcade,” said the letter, a copy of which was obtained by AFP. It said it was issuing the threat after the decision by the Hague-based International Court of Justice, which meant “there is no genocide no matter what one group of people does to the other.” (AFP)