TIRANA (AP) – The United States has sent federal experts to Albania to help investigate a massive explosion at an ammunition dump last month that killed more than 20 people and injured about 300, the US ambassador in Tirana said yesterday. John L. Withers said six agents from the US Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms arrived in Tirana on Sunday to assist Albanian police and prosecutors in the investigation, according to a statement released by the US Embassy. The US Military’s European Command has also sent a team of experts in explosive ordnance, hazardous materials, environmental analysis and forensic science to examine the explosion site and offer advice to Albanian authorities, he said. The exact causes of the blast have yet to be determined, but it occurred during work to dispose of old artillery shells.

SOFIA (AFP) – Georgy Stoev, known as the chronicler of the underworld for his nine books on the origins of the Bulgarian Mafia, was shot in the head in Sofia yesterday, the Interior Ministry said. Stoev, 35, received a single bullet to the head shortly after noon outside a downtown Sofia hotel and was taken to hospital in critical condition, the ministry said. A former wrestler and bodyguard, Stoev became famous for his nine books about the birth of the Bulgarian underworld, in which he wrote about some of the biggest gangland bosses, whom he claimed to have known closely. This was the second high-profile shooting in the Bulgarian capital in 24 hours.

A former Bosnian-Serb police chief has pleaded not guilty to genocide and other war crimes. The Court of Bosnia-Herzegovina said yesterday that 49-year-old Vinko Kondic entered his plea regarding three charges. One alleges that in late 1991 he ordered his policemen to arrest at least 30 Croats who had fled Croatia’s war and to torture them at his police station in the Bosnian town of Kljuc. Kondic also is accused of knowing his police arrested 1,161 Muslim Bosniaks in 1992 during Bosnia’s war and sent them to a concentration camp, and that they killed 219 other Bosniaks at an unknown location that year. (AP)

Doctors at a Belgrade military hospital say 29 people have been hospitalized following an explosion and a fire at a pesticide warehouse in a Belgrade suburb. Police are giving no explanation for the blast Sunday evening at the Galenika pharmaceutical factory, located on the outskirts of the Serbian capital. The warehouse is part of the factory complex. Firefighters wearing protective clothes managed to put out the fire in a few hours. (AP)

Slovakia agreed to a deal yesterday with the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia enabling convicts to serve their sentences in Slovak prisons, the ICTY said. The accord, signed in The Hague by Slovakia’s Justice Minister Stefan Harabin and ICTY Registrar Hans Holthuis, has still to be ratified by the country’s parliament, but follows similar deals with another 13 states. (AFP)