KABUL (AFP) - A Turkish engineer taken hostage with a driver and interpreter in Afghanistan was killed by kidnappers who had been cornered by police, officials said yesterday. The victim, named by Turkish diplomats as Eyup Orel, was working on a US-funded road project in eastern Kunar province when he was abducted on Tuesday. Orel was found dead yesterday morning after police closed in on the hostage-takers, Interior Ministry spokesman Lutfullah Mashal told AFP. The driver and interpreter were freed earlier.

ISTANBUL (AFP) - Ten people remained under hospital treatment for smoke inhalation yesterday following a spectacular fire that broke out during the premiere of a horror film in one of Istanbul’s cinemas, health officials said. None of them was seriously injured, they added. A total of 164 people were treated after the fire, which broke out on Tuesday night at a movie complex in an Istanbul shopping mall, they said. The fire broke out when candles set fire to special items of decor set up for the gala showing of a Turkish horror film called “Buyu” (The Spell) at a cinema in Sisli, on the European side of the city.

Authorities in the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia (FYROM) yesterday intercepted 122.5 kilograms (270 pounds) of heroin bound for Western European markets, officials said. Interior Ministry spokesman Goran Pavlovski said sniffer dogs had found the drugs hidden in 245 separate packages in a secret compartment of a truck which was trying to enter Serbia. Two Slav-Macedonians, the truckdriver and a passenger, were arrested at the scene, he said. (AFP)

The Albanian government said yesterday it has frozen the assets of a Saudi citizen who is under investigation for alleged money-laundering for terror networks. Authorities have seized 22 apartment units owned by Yasin Al-Qadi, a fugitive Saudi businessman suspected of laundering money for Osama bin Laden’s terror network through extensive business dealings in Albania, said Alban Beqa, a spokesman for the Finance Ministry. (AP)