ISTANBUL (AFP) - A Turkish army reservist and a Kurdish rebel were killed Friday in a rocket attack by rebel forces against a military post in the Kurdish majority region of southeast Turkey, the Anatolia news agency reported Saturday. Four soldiers were slightly wounded in the strike at Erenkaya Koyu, a village in Siirt province, the agency said, adding that a search operation had been launched to track down the rebels of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party, which has been blamed for the attack. Also, six people were being held by police in connection with a bomb blast that injured five people at a filling station in Istanbul and was claimed by a Kurdish group.

SOFIA (AFP) - Bulgaria’s former interior minister, General Boiko Borisov, won the first round in the elections for Sofia’s next mayor, but without a clear majority the popular crime-buster must face a socialist rival in a runoff ballot, final official results showed yesterday. “People are disgusted with politics. We have to be frank and honest to win back their confidence,” Borisov said after the first official results were released. Borisov, who ran as an independent candidate, garnered 38.11 percent of the vote, followed by Tatyana Doncheva with 23.19 percent.

Turkish authorities have culled some 750 chickens and ducks in a western village but said there was no confirmation of a bird flu case, a news report said yesterday. Authorities said they culled the birds in the village of Akbaslar in Bursa province following the sudden deaths of other birds in the area, the Anatolia news agency reported. (AP)

An 18-year-old was stabbed to death in Serbia during a fight between supporters of two soccer clubs, police said yesterday. Fans of Bezanija and Cukaricki, two minor local clubs, scuffled after a match Saturday in Belgrade, police said. The 18-year-old, Golub Balevic, died at the hospital.

A moderate earthquake shook Turkey’s third-largest city of Izmir on Saturday, a seismology center said, the latest in a series of tremors in the Aegean Sea. The quake, with a preliminary magnitude of 4.5, was centered in the Aegean and struck at 5.48 p.m. (local time), the Kandilli Observatory said. There were no immediate reports of any damage. (AP)