SOFIA (AFP) – Three people have been found infected with the rare animal disease brucellosis in southern Bulgaria as a result of testing after a woman fell ill last week, local health officials said yesterday. Some 60 people from the southern village of Valche Pole, near the Greek border, were tested for the rare infection after local resident Rosa Ivanova, 65, fell ill last week, Eli Tasheva of the regional health inspector’s office told BTA news agency. “Three of the tested samples were positive,” she said, adding that 58 more samples from people who had come into contact with sick animals in the village had been sent yesterday to a laboratory in Sofia for testing. The disease cannot be passed from one human to another.

BELGRADE (Reuters) – A Serbian nationalist movement says it is trying to establish a nationwide network of “safe houses” for top war crimes fugitive General Ratko Mladic, the Belgrade daily Pravda reported yesterday. Posters and stickers with the words “Safe House for Ratko Mladic” appeared on Monday morning in the capital and seven other towns in Serbia. “We plan to print thousands of such signs for citizens to put up on doors and windows, so the general would know which house was a safe hiding place in case, God forbid, someone tries to arrest him,” said Misa Vacic, spokesman for the 1389 group. “One of our teams was stopped by a police patrol, but instead of filing a report against them, they asked for a poster to put up on the police station wall,” he said.

Two Kurdish rebels were killed yesterday in fighting with the army in eastern Turkey, officials said. The clash erupted in a rural area in the province of Van when the two “terrorists” refused calls to surrender and opened fire on security forces, the local governor’s office said in a statement carried by Anatolia news. (AFP)

Bosnian authorities yesterday arrested a former Serb police commander wanted by a local court for alleged war crimes, an official said. “Nedjo Zeljaja, 60, was arrested this morning in Kalinovik,” Boris Grubesic, the spokesman for the prosecutor, told AFP. Police were acting on a warrant issued by Bosnia’s war crimes prosecutor, he added. Zeljaja was accused of crimes against humanity committed against Muslims in Kalinovik, 40 kilometres (25 miles) south of Sarajevo, in the early stages of Bosnia’s war, he added. (AFP)

The Bosnian-Serb government and Norwegian power group Technor Energy agreed yesterday to build hydroelectricity power plants on the Bosna River, a local radio station said. Construction of seven 70-megawatt plants is to start next year under the terms of three contracts worth a total 152 million euros ($207 million). (AFP)

A Serbian Orthodox Church bishop launched a hunger strike on the border crossing with Montenegro yesterday after he was banned from entering the republic because of his alleged support for UN war crimes fugitives. Montenegrin police said Bishop Filaret was among dozens of people listed by the UN war crimes tribunal for former Yugoslavia as helpers of suspected war crimes criminals wanted by the court in The Hague, Netherlands. “I did not want to hold a political gathering, I just wanted to pray to God,” Bishop Filaret said, according to the Beta news agency. (AP)