SARAJEVO (Reuters) - The Bosnian-Serb government has admitted that police forces from Serbia proper took part in the 1995 Srebrenica massacre of up to 8,000 Muslims, a Bosnian daily reported yesterday. The Sarajevo-based Oslobodjenje said the admission was contained in the latest report by a government commission investigating Europe's worst war atrocity since WWII. "The Bosnian-Serb Interior Ministry in cooperation with the panel has confirmed the involvement in the Srebrenica massacre of joint forces of the Serbian Interior Ministry under the command of Ljubomir Borovcanin,» it quoted the report as saying. But a Serb Republic police spokesman, Radovan Pejic, said, «Nobody from the Interior Ministry has ever or will ever confirm the involvement of Serbian forces in Srebrenica.»

SARAJEVO (AFP) - The remains of what are believed to be 134 Muslim victims of the 1995 Srebrenica massacre, the worst atrocity of Bosnia's 1992-95 war, were exhumed from a mass grave in the northeast of the country, a forensic expert said yesterday. «So far we found 134 incomplete skeletons and dozens of unattached human bones,» a member of the Muslim Croat Commission for the Missing Murat Hurtic told AFP. The remains were unearthed from the grave in the village of Liplje, 30 kilometers (19 miles) out of Srebrenica, and at least 50 more are expected to be found, he said.

A series of explosions at a fireworks warehouse in Istanbul yesterday killed at least six people and wounded three others, Istanbul's Disaster Coordination Center said. The explosions occurred at a depot in Umraniye, on the outskirts of the Asian side of the city, at around 11 a.m. local time, police said. (AP)

Former President Ion Iliescu has been indicted on charges related to a deadly miners' riot in 1990 in which six people died, his lawyer said yesterday. Iliescu, now a senator for the opposition Social Democracy Party, said he was innocent and called the charges «trash.» The former president has parliamentary immunity and cannot face trial. (AP)

Kosovo's former prime minister Ramush Haradinaj returned home yesterday after being released by a UN tribunal in the Netherlands pending the start of his war crimes trial. Haradinaj, 36, resigned on March 9, a day after learning of a UN indictment accusing him of war crimes committed during the 1998-1999 conflict with Serbian government forces. He had been in the UN tribunal's custody since then. A panel of three judges released him Tuesday until the start of his trial. (AP)