SARAJEVO (AFP) - The remains of 12 women and seven men believed to be Muslims killed at the outbreak of Bosnia’s 1992-95 war have been exhumed from a mass grave in southern part of the country, an official said yesterday. “The victims are to be identified by DNA analyses, but we have reason to believe they were Muslim civilians from the nearby village of Lakat executed by the Bosnian-Serb army,” a member of the Muslim-Croat commission for missing people, Sanja Mulac, said. The grave, located on Kiser hill near the southern town of Konjic, was discovered at the weekend.

BERLIN (AFP) - German holidaymakers found themselves using adhesive tape to stick together the interior of a plane operated by a Turkish airline with a troubled safety record, a German newspaper said yesterday. The midair repair job came during an Onur Air flight from Antalya in southern Turkey to the eastern German city of Leipzig, the Bild newspaper said. “The pilot started the engines. Suddenly a piece of the interior of the plane fell on our heads. Some of the holidaymakers started to scream,” one of the passengers, Gunnar Storch, 34, told the Bild. “Behind the interior casing, we could see the exposed wiring. It wasn’t a very reassuring sight.”

UN police have stepped up security in Serb areas in Kosovo following the weekend killing of two Serbs, police said yesterday. “There has been increased security, especially in minority enclaves. It’s still ongoing,” UN police spokesman Dimitri Pryakhin told Reuters. Two Serb men, aged 24 and 28, were shot dead late on Saturday as they drove home to the southern Serb enclave of Strpce, the worst incident in over a year involving minority Serbs in the Albanian-dominated province. (Reuters)

Azerbaijan’s foreign minister yesterday downplayed the importance of a flight from the Turkish-occupied north of Cyprus that flew directly to the breakaway state in defiance of an embargo on international flights imposed by the Cypriot government. “This visit is, above all, an economic one linked to business affairs. There is no need to politicize the issue,” Azeri Foreign Minister Elmar Mammadyarov told reporters. (AP)

A Bosnian Serb indicted by the United Nations war crimes tribunal is in jail awaiting extradition in a remote region of Russia, the Interfax news agency quoted a local prosecutor as saying yesterday. Dragan Zelenovic, wanted to stand trial in The Hague for the torture and rape of Muslim women in Bosnia’s 1992-95 war, was arrested in the Khanti-Mansiisk autonomous district in western Siberia, the agency said. (Reuters)

The Netherlands will donate 2 million euros (US $2.5 million) to improve conditions in Romanian prisons, officials said yesterday. Dutch European Affairs Minister Atzo Nicolai signed the donation agreement in Bucharest, with the money going mostly to replace outdated heating systems at several prisons. (AP)