ANKARA (AP) – Turkish warplanes successfully attacked 16 Kurdish rebel targets in a cross-border raid in northern Iraq, a military spokesman said yesterday. The strikes late Thursday targeted rebel positions on Qandil Mountain, Brigadier General Metin Gurak told reporters. He said the warplanes took care to spare civilians from harm but, in northern Iraq, spokesman Ahmed Deniz of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party said the air raid had damaged a school and wounded three people. The attack began at 10 p. m. Thursday and lasted two hours, Deniz said, bombing areas including the villages of Kutak, Surage and Kozala. One rebel and two civilians were wounded, he said.

VIENNA (AFP) – The media representative for the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) yesterday condemned a violent assault on a Bulgarian journalist earlier this week and urged the authorities to clamp down on other similar attacks. “I am concerned about the latest brutal attack on investigative journalist Ognian Stefanov, and alarmed by the frequency of similar, violent acts against journalists in Bulgaria in the last years,” Miklos Haraszti wrote in a letter to Bulgarian Foreign Minister Ivailo Kalfin. Stefanov, 54, editor-in-chief of the frognews website, was attacked Monday in Sofia by hammer-wielding assailants and suffered multiple injuries, including many to the head. He remains in the hospital on artificial respiration.

BUCHAREST (AP) – Romanian authorities have decided to let hunters shoot brown bears, which are increasingly moving into cities and resort areas to find food. Some of the animals have become tame, allowing tourists to take close-up photographs. But a few months ago, a bear killed a man in the city of Brasov. Environment Minister Attila Korodi said Thursday that he authorized hunting associations to shoot the bears in areas frequented by tourists in Brasov and Prahova Valley. Authorities say they are monitoring some 800 bears in the Brasov area, 100 more than last year. Romania is home to 60 percent of the bears in the European Union.

The Yugoslav war crimes tribunal has rejected genocide suspect Radovan Karadzic’s request to have all evidence and court transcripts presented to him in the Cyrillic script. Karadzic has applied to have all documents in his case translated into Serbian and written in Cyrillic. Judges said yesterday that Karadzic understands Serbian, written in Latin script, and the court has repeatedly rejected requests for Cyrillic documents. (AP)

Bulgaria’s state security agency DANS said yesterday it had sacked a top official after the contact numbers of two MPs had been listed without authorization. The head of internal security at DANS, Vladimir Pissanchev, was ousted after phone calls made by the two deputies, both on the parliamentary national security commission, appeared on a list without authorization from prosecutors. The calls were not recorded however. “If DANS is used as a secret police, that’s a serious problem,” noted political expert Tikhomir Bezloc. (AFP)

Bosnia’s electoral commission yesterday rejected demands to accredit Kosovo monitors to oversee October 5 local elections here after initially inviting them to do so. “The request to accredit monitors from Kosovo has been rejected,” spokeswoman Maksida Bajramovic said. Earlier this week Bosnian Serb Prime Minister Milorad Dodik slammed the poll commission for inviting monitors from Kosovo. However, Bajramovic explained that the invitation was sent in May to then-chief of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) Tim Guldimann who was also Kosovo commission chair. Since then a Kosovar has taken over the function in the electoral commission there, she said. (AFP)