GENEVA (AFP) – The UN’s refugee agency said yesterday it had information that Turkey had deported 135 Iraqi refugees, calling the act a violation of international law. The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) said Turkish authorities forcibly returned 135 Iraqis to their home country earlier this week. “Given the current situation in Iraq, the UNHCR is extremely concerned for the safety of these people.” The 135 were apprehended in the western Izmir region and the UNHCR said it understood some members of the group had made asylum claims.

SARAJEVO (AFP) – Remains believed to account for more than 130 victims of the 1995 Srebrenica massacre have been exhumed from a mass grave in eastern Bosnia, a forensic expert said yesterday. “We have just completed the exhumation of the grave” that was discovered earlier this month, Murat Hurtic of Bosnia’s Missing Persons Commission told AFP. Twenty-nine complete and 102 incomplete skeletons have been exhumed from the grave in the village of Budak outside Srebrenica, Hurtic said. The skeletons were crushed, indicating they had originally been located elsewhere before being reburied at the site by bulldozers.

A NATO transport vehicle overturned yesterday in northern Kosovo, leaving six peacekeepers injured, including one in serious condition, officials said. The vehicle belonged to French troops, though peacekeepers from other countries may have been on board, according to Lt Col Knut Peters, a spokesman for the 16,000-strong NATO-led peacekeeping force, KFOR. “All six were injured; one of them is in serious condition” and being treated at a military hospital, Peters said. (AP)

A group of some 100 Gypsies who had been living in makeshift tents in Ireland were voluntarily repatriated and escorted back to their home villages in western Romania, officials said yesterday. The 99 Gypsies, including 36 children, arrived on a plane late Wednesday in the western city of Timisoara. They were escorted by more than 30 Irish police officers, local Romanian officials said. The group had been living in makeshift tents near a highway in Ireland before Irish authorities offered to fund their trip home. Some Gypsies chose to remain in Ireland. Those who returned were taken to two villages in the Bihor county, near Romania’s border with Hungary. (AP)

A dogcatcher in Bosnia accused of euthanizing dogs by bludgeoning them to death has been placed under investigation for animal cruelty, authorities said yesterday. To save bullets, the dogcatcher in the eastern town of Rudo, Milan Cupovic, allegedly used shovels and stones to finish off stray dogs he had previously shot, authorities said. (AFP)