SARAJEVO (AFP) - Forensic experts have found the remains of nearly 250 people believed to be victims of the 1995 Srebrenica massacre in a mass grave in the eastern Bosnian village of Bljeceva, an official said yesterday. “We have exhumed 38 complete and 211 incomplete bodies,” Commission for Missing People representative Murat Hurtic said, bringing the total to 249. Hurtic said documents found in the grave suggested it contained victims of the massacre of over 7,000 Muslims by Serb forces in the eastern town of Srebrenica in 1995, Europe’s worst post-World War II atrocity.

SOFIA (AP) - A bronze head, depicting an ancient Thracian ruler that was unearthed by Bulgarian archaeologists, is 2,300 years old, a newspaper reported yesterday. “This massive bronze head dates back to the fourth century BC... and is the first discovery of its kind, as no similar metal objects of Thracian art have been found,” the project’s lead archaeologist, Georgi Kitov, told the Bulgarian daily 24 Chasa. Kitov, who is at the excavation site, could not be immediately reached for comment. The discovery was made late Tuesday near the town of Shipka, 200 kilometers (120 miles) east of Sofia.

Croatian police yesterday stormed the houses of alleged friends of the UN war crimes tribunal’s third most-wanted indicted fugitive. Police searched the homes of three people said to be linked to General Ante Gotovina, who has been on the run since he was indicted in July 2001 for atrocities his troops committed in the final Croatian government offensive against rebel Serbs in August 1995. “As part of searching for General Ante Gotovina, police in Zagreb and Zadar are investigating three persons,” said an Interior Ministry statement, faxed to Reuters, adding that police suspect the three of helping Gotovina. Officers searched their houses, offices and cars and found an unspecified amount of undeclared firearms, the statement said. (Reuters)

Bosnia is not yet ready to host war crimes trials in line with international legal standards, a senior international envoy to the country said in a letter to the UN war crimes tribunal here yesterday. “There will be no possibility to provide before the planned date of January 2005 trials that meet the standard of international due process,” Senior Deputy High Representative Bernard Fassier wrote, according to court spokesman Jim Landale. Chief UN war crimes prosecutor Carla Del Ponte asked this month that the cases of four Bosnian Serbs, accused of committing atrocities in camps in northwestern Bosnia during the 1992-95 war, be referred to a Bosnian court. (AFP)

The German government has agreed to give a loan of 86 million euros ($105 million) to link Albania’s electricity network with regional power grids, the Ministry of Industry and Energy said yesterday. Germany’s government-owned KfW Bank will lend the money for the link with Montenegro. The link is part of a two-year-old plan to connect the electricity grids of southeastern Europe by 2005 and to deregulate their markets. (AP)

International donors have pledged $1.2 billion to fund the lion’s share of Bosnia’s medium-term development strategy, Prime Minister Adnan Terzic said yesterday at the end of a two-day donors coordination meeting in Sarajevo co-chaired by the European Commission and the World Bank. (AFP)