DIYARBAKIR (AFP) - Four people died and nine others were injured yesterday as Turkish soldiers and state-armed militias were targeted in three separate mine attacks blamed on separatist Kurdish rebels, local sources said. The incidents, in the southeast and east of the country where the outlawed Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) is active, were caused by remote-controlled mines that the sources said were planted by PKK rebels. The first saw a minibus carrying civilians and «village guards» - a government-armed Kurdish militia supporting the army in the fight against the PKK - blown up at Sason, in the southeast province of Batman, the governor's office said. Three village guards were killed on the spot, while five people were injured, the statement said. One of the injured later died in the local hospital, a source said. The second, in Siirt province in the country's southeast, saw a military convoy hit, injuring a soldier and a village guard, according to a security source. In the third blast, three soldiers were injured when their vehicle hit a mine on rural land in the eastern province of Bingol, local security sources said.

BELGRADE (AFP) - A Serbian court has freed a former Yugoslav air force pilot handed over to the country 18 months ago by Italy, where he was serving a prison term, Beta news reported. Emir Sisic, a former MIG fighter pilot in the Yugoslav Air Force, had been sentenced in Italy to a 15-year jail term for killing five peace monitors in Croatia when he shot down their helicopter in January 1992. Four of the victims were Italian diplomats, and the fifth was French.

Montenegro unveiled its first passport in some 90 years yesterday, two years after declaring independence, and said it hoped to agree to visa-free travel with the European Union soon. The new rust-red passport replaces the blue Yugoslav document that Montenegrins have carried since the mid-1990s, when they remained the only members of the rump federation along with Serbia.

Hundreds of ethnic Albanians protested yesterday against Serbia's plans to hold weekend elections in Kosovo, dumping garbage in front of the UN mission and government buildings in Pristina. The protesters said the United Nations' interim Kosovo mission, UNMIK, and the Kosovo ethnic Albanian government were responsible for failing to prevent the elections from going ahead tomorrow. (AFP)