OSLO (AFP) – Norway will extradite a Croatian war crimes suspect to Serbia, its Justice Ministry said yesterday. “The Justice Ministry has decided that a Croatian citizen who is charged with war crimes shall be extradited to Serbia... (He) is wanted in both Serbia and Croatia,” the ministry said in a statement. Deputy public prosecutor Siri Frigaard confirmed that the suspect was Damir Sireta, who has lived in Norway since 1998 and was detained in 2006 on suspicion of committing war crimes near the Croatian town of Vukovar in November 1991. Sireta, 44, is wanted by Serbia for allegedly ordering and taking part in the execution of some 200 Croatian prisoners of war who had already laid down their weapons. Croatia has also requested Sireta’s extradition, where he has been sentenced in absentia to 12 years in prison for the murder of a prisoner. “We determined that Serbia had the most serious charges against him,” Justice Ministry official Wenche Kvernland told AFP.

ZAGREB (AFP) – Six Serbs, including five currently on the run, were charged late on Monday with the torture and killing of 23 Croats during the 1991-95 Serbo-Croat war, a judicial source said. Prosecutors said 18 civilians and five soldiers from Tenja, near the eastern city of Osijek, were put to forced labor, beaten and finally executed between July and November 1991. The six suspects were military and police officers. Police are searching for the five fugitives, with the sixth being held at a prison in Osijek.

Two Turkish furnace technicians and an Albanian colleague were arrested yesterday after an explosion at a scrap metal factory, 55 kilometers (34 miles) south of Tirana, killed a worker and left six others critically injured, police said. The blast occurred late on Monday when an unexploded shell among other pieces of scrap metal was thrown into a furnace at the plant. Police said the three technicians were arrested on charges of negligence but did not give further details. (AP)

Three construction workers were trapped and killed in a landslide in the southwestern Bulgarian town of Blagoevgrad, state BTA news agency reported yesterday. The workers had been digging a ditch to change underground sewage pipes when mud collapsed over them, BTA quoted local police as saying. The bodies of the men – aged 32, 34 and 47 – had not yet been recovered because rescuers were first securing the ditch in order not to risk another incident. (AFP)

Construction workers in the Croatian capital Zagreb found a 250-kilogram (550-pound) bomb from World War II, the third of its kind discovered at the same site during the past month, police said yesterday. The bomb was found on Monday during excavation works in a residential area, a police statement said. (AFP)