Bijeljina

The Serbian Democratic Party, the main opposition party in Republika Srpska, has lost control of the key bastion of Bijeljina following a controversial session of the town council.

Bosnia's state prosecution on Friday asked the state court, the Court of Bosnia and Herzegovina, to detain Slobodan Pavlovic, the owner of Pavlovic Bank, for 30 days together with Petar Lazic, the former bank director, Ljiljana Garic, an employee in the department for credits and Blago Blagojevic, a former employee of Pavlovic's company Slobomir.

A Belgrade court acquitted former Serbian volunteer fighter Miodrag Zivkovic of raping two Bosniak women in the Bosnian town of Bijeljina during the war in 1992.

Bosnia's State Intelligence and Protection Agency, SIPA, raided the premises of Pavlovic International Bank in the northeastern Bosnian town of Bijeljina on Wednesday.

They entered the bank "under a mandate given by the Prosecution of Bosnia and Herzegovina, which is investigating a possible case of illegal transactions", the spokesperson of SIPA confirmed to BIRN.

Police in Republika Srpska, the Serb-dominated entity of Bosnia, on Friday seized a huge quantity of flammable liquids, explosives and fireworks that were going to be used "in a possible terrorist attack".

The action took place at the Hotel Dallas in Janja, a village in northeast Bosnia.

Dozens of truck drivers from Bosnia's Serb-dominated entity of Republika Srpska lined up vehicles and blocked border crossings and customs posts near the towns of Gradiska, Samac, Bijeljina and Zvornik, in the north and east of the country, in a protest against new licensing regulations.

In a rare display of professional unity in the ethnically divided country, journalists across Bosnia and Herzegovina have joined forces to stand up for media freedoms.

"Media that dare to do the essence of our job - asking questions - find themselves under different pressures," Milkica Milojevic, president of the BH Journalists association told Balkan Insight.

The Mayor of the northeastern Bosnian town of Bijeljina, Mico Micic, has estimated the cost of flood damage to the town at around 200 million euro.

On Wednesday, he said the devastating floods in May damaged more than 11,000 sites, 7,000 to 8,000 of which were people's homes. Farmland was also destroyed.

Federation entity inspectors on June 5 said work on gathering, destroying or burying the remains of thousands of animals and birds killed in the recent floods was coming to an end.

Around 200 tons of dead cattle and poultry have been removed from the Posavina Canton of northern Bosnia to an incinerator in Indjija, in Serbia, Balkan Insight has learned.

Hazards such as unexploded landmines left from the 1992-95 war and hidden weapons that people have stored since the conflict ended have started emerging in Bosnia as a result of the flood disaster.