ISTANBUL (AP) – The death toll in the sinking of a boat carrying illegal migrants rose to 46 after three more bodies were found yesterday, an official said. The 15-meter (50-foot) boat sank over the weekend off Turkey’s Aegean coast, and most of the bodies were recovered on Monday, said Ercan Dogu, spokesman for the local governor in the coastal city of Izmir. Dogu said most of the migrants on the boat were Palestinians, Somalis and Iraqis. Six people were rescued, and paramilitary police and the coast guard were still searching for missing migrants with the help of local fishermen.

DIYARBAKIR (Reuters) – State prosecutors demanded jail sentences yesterday for 54 mayors in mainly Kurdish southeast Turkey for suggesting that jailed Kurdish guerrilla leader Abdullah Ocalan may have been poisoned. The prosecutors said the mayors had “praised” Ocalan and his actions – a crime in Turkey – at a joint news conference in March when they asked the authorities to investigate claims that the rebel leader was gradually being poisoned in prison. The 54 mayors, all from the pro-Kurdish Democratic Society Party (DTP), are standing trial and could face up to two years in prison if convicted.

A US envoy accused the family of Radovan Karadzic of helping the indicted genocide suspect to evade justice, despite their denial of having contact with him and their appeal to him to surrender. Raffi Gregorian, deputy to Bosnia’s international peace overseer Miroslav Lajcak, told a Banja Luka-based TV station that evidence collected during raids on homes of his family members indicated they had been in contact with Karadzic. “Information gathered during investigations of homes of the Karadzic family over the past three years confirm that such contacts exist,” Gregorian said on Monday evening. (Reuters)

Two miners were killed yesterday when they were buried by coal waste in a mine in central Bosnia, police said, confirming local media reports. It was immediately unclear how the waste coal came loose and poured over the men in the Stara Jama mining pit, near the town of Zenica. Authorities were investigating. (AP)