ANKARA (AP) – Kurdish rebels detonated a roadside bomb as two minibuses carrying army personnel passed yesterday, injuring 11 soldiers and two civilians, the state-run Anatolia news agency reported. The attack occurred near the town of Eruh in southeastern Siirt province, the agency said. Military helicopters ferried the injured to a local hospital as troops backed by helicopter gunships launched an operation to hunt down the rebels in the area, private Dogan news agency said. Kurdish rebels have killed about 80 soldiers since January, mostly in roadside bomb attacks on military vehicles.

BUCHAREST (AFP) – Romanian authorities introduced a flood alert on Saturday after heavy rains blocked roads and two people were killed by lightning, officials and media said. A 20-year-old man was struck down by a lightning bolt in Gorj, in the southwest, as was a shepherd in Braila in the southeast, according to Realitatea TV. The Environment Ministry said emergency services were mobilized to deal with possible flooding and 11 departments in western and central Romania had been put on orange alert until yesterday evening. Several roads in central Romania have been blocked by the rain and dozens of tourists were stuck in the mountainous Brasov region after flooding destroyed a section of the access road overnight.

A train derailed in the southeastern Turkish province of Mus on Saturday, but there were no casualties, the Anatolia news agency reported. Eight carriages overturned in the accident, blamed on rails expanded by the heat, officials told the agency. There were 20 passengers in three of the carriages. The remaining five were freight wagons. (AFP)

Romania’s Orthodox Church has protested allegations by a former anti-communist dissident that some of its top officials had ties to the communist-era secret police, the feared Securitate, it emerged late Friday. Mircea Dinescu, a poet who is now a board member of the state council for studying the Securitate archives, had claimed the late Metropolitan and Archbishop Antonie Plamadeala, who died in 2005, had been an undercover Securitate officer. Dinescu added that the council would check the Securitate files of leading clerics to ensure the church does not pick “a Securitate general” as new patriarch in upcoming elections. (AP)