KUCUKGECIT (Reuters) - An earthquake measuring 5.1 on the Richter scale killed nine people and injured dozens more in an eastern region of Turkey late on Thursday. At least six children were among the dead and 46 people were injured, the Public Works Ministry and rescuers told Reuters. The tremor struck a rural area of Erzurum province, about 900 kilometers (600 miles) east of the capital Ankara, leveling almost every structure in this village of one-story stone and mud houses in an elevated area. The Public Works Ministry said Erzurum’s Askale county was the epicenter. As many as 51 aftershocks shook the region.

BELGRADE (AP) - Serbian lawmakers yesterday passed a declaration which calls Kosovo an “inseparable” part of Serbia and warns against changing any borders when deciding the UN-run province’s final status. The declaration urged the UN to “rethink and revise” its policies following last week’s ethnic violence, adding that while “Kosovo remains an inseparable part of Serbia,” the Serbs in the province must be given “new institutional guarantees for their status and better protection of their rights.”

A Turkish court sentenced four policemen to over four years in prison yesterday for killing a university student 13 years ago in a human rights case closely followed by the US and the EU. But the policemen, found guilty of killing Birtan Altinbas while he was held in detention in 1991, will be free until the Court of Appeals has confirmed the sentence, the Anatolia news agency said. (Reuters)

NATO ally Romania said yesterday it expects its Black Sea military bases to play a part in what could be the biggest-ever shifting of US forces in Europe, a move aimed at tackling new global security threats. Deputy Defense Minister George Maior told Reuters in an interview that Washington was considering setting up a base in Romania as part of moves to realign its forces in Europe, but it has yet to pick the exact location. (Reuters)

A Muslim preacher in eastern Turkey has lost almost all his flock after scolding local men in his sermons for not helping their wives do household chores, the popular daily Sabah reported yesterday. “They are no longer coming to prayers. Even Friday prayers are joined only by three people,” the imam, Mustafa Platin, 27, told Sabah in the small village of Kotanduzu in eastern Turkey, where patriarchal traditions still rule the society. “Women do all the work in this village. They do the washing, look after the livestock, cook. Atop all this, they carry water (from the village’s well). All I told the men was that they should at least carry the water,” he said. (AFP)