ANKARA (AFP) - Fifteen people have been killed in floods and avalanches triggered by torrential rains and melting snow over the past two days in eastern and southeast Turkey, the Anatolia news agency reported. The latest victim was a 7-year-old girl whose body was found 700 meters from her house after she was swept away on Saturday by floodwaters in Cat, eastern Turkey, it said. Three deaths were reported in the eastern town of Erzurum, two in Batman in the southeast and another in Bitlis, while five people were unaccounted for in Kony, central Turkey, and Silifke in the south, officials said. Meanwhile eight people, including a 60-year-old British skier, died in avalanches in eastern Turkey on Friday and Saturday. In Silifke, nearly 10,000 houses were submerged by overflowing waters of the Goksu river, Anatolia quoted the provincial governor, Atilla Osmancelebioglu, as saying.

BELGRADE (AP) - Prime Minister Vojislav Kostunica on Saturday appointed an aide detained during last year’s crackdown on organized crime as the new chief of Serbia’s secret service. Rade Bulatovic served as Kostunica’s security adviser while he was president of Yugoslavia, the predecessor state to Serbia-Montenegro. He was appointed head of the Security Information Agency at a government session held on Saturday, said a statement faxed to The Associated Press. But the appointment is also likely to fuel criticism of Kostunica. Bulatovic has alleged ties to the regime of former President Slobodan Milosevic and was detained last year during the police sweep that followed the March 12 assassination of Prime Minister Zoran Djindjic.

Around 50,000 Turks gathered in the capital Ankara on Saturday to protest against the government’s IMF-backed plans to reform the public sector, local television stations reported. Protesters, largely from labor unions and leftist groups, marched against a draft bill now before Parliament that aims to overhaul management of the public sector, especially municipal bureaucracies. Turkey’s government is implementing a series of reforms, promised to the International Monetary Fund (IMF) under a $19 billion loan accord, inked after a punishing 2001 financial crisis. (Reuters)

Two retired Croatian generals recently indicted for war crimes against ethnic Serbs in southern Croatia will soon report to the UN war crimes tribunal in The Hague, press reports said yesterday. The pro-government daily Vjesnik said the two generals, Ivan Cermak and Mladen Markac, would fly to The Hague by Friday. Media reports said Cermak and Markac were recently indicted by the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) but Croatian authorities are withholding comment. (AFP)