PARIS (AFP) - Restoration work will begin next year in Kosovo on seven Serbian Orthodox and six Islamic heritage sites, damaged during years of interethnic violence in the province, UNESCO announced. The sites — five churches, a cathedral and a monastery, three mosques and three hammams — were chosen earlier this month by a UNESCO expert committee, from a list of 75 buildings. The restoration work, to be carried out in 2006-7, will be funded with pledges secured at an international donors conference in May.

ZAGREB (AFP) - Serbia-Montenegro President Svetozar Marovic said he believes Croatia is genuine in its efforts to urge the return of ethnic Serbs who have fled the country since its 1991-1995 war. “I would like to convince all of those who are still in Serbia-Montenegro and are hesitating about returning... that there is no hypocritical attitude” by Croatia’s government, Marovic told journalists.

The Netherlands donated 11 million dollars (9.2 million euros) for the recovery of Bosnia’s Srebrenica region, the site of Europe’s worst atrocity since World War II, the UN said. The money would be used over the next three years in order to implement a project by the United Nations Development Program for the recovery of the eastern Bosnian region, the UNDP said in a statement. (AFP)

Fifteen people, including 12 children, were injured at a birthday party in Kosovo when a gaslight exploded during a blackout, police said. The blast “happened accidentally” on Monday night in the central village of Vrbovce while the family was using a gaslight during a power cut. (AFP)

UN police thwarted an attempted breakout by 14 inmates from Kosovo’s biggest prison, officials said. “Fourteen inmates attempted to break out of the yard of the Dubrava prison (in western Kosovo) late Monday,” local police spokesman Refki Morina told AFP, adding that the incident was followed by sporadic gunfire outside the jail. (AFP)

Judges in Slobodan Milosevic’s trial have denied his request for a defense extension and have consequently dropped plans to separate alleged offenses committed in Kosovo from those in Bosnia and Croatia, the UN court announced. “The Kosovo indictment will not be severed,” the tribunal said in a statement. (AFP)

Thousands of teachers across Bulgaria staged a strike for a second day to demand higher wages and better education funding. Classes were not held in some 1,900 schools and 520 kindergartens in this Balkan country, where more than 55,000 teachers were on strike, the organizers from the National Teachers’ Union said. (AP)