BANJA LUKA, Bosnia-Hercegovina (AFP) - Bosnian Serb police detained eight suspects wanted by the UN war crimes court, the first such arrests since the end of the 1992-95 conflict, police and court sources said.
"Republika Srpska police detained eight people who figure on the UN war crimes court's wanted list, for whom the tribunal has given a green light to be processed by local courts," an interior ministry statement said.
The eight are suspected of committing war crimes and violating the laws and customs of war, it added.
They are the first war crimes suspects to be arrested by Bosnian Serb authorities since the conflict, which claimed some 200,000 lives and saw the worst atrocities in Europe since the end of World War II.
All previous Bosnian suspects who have appeared before the UN tribunal have surrendered or have been arrested by NATO-led peacekeepers.
A Sarajevo court official told AFP two of the suspects, Svetko Novakovic and Jovan Skobo, were also facing genocide charges. Court official Slobodan Nikolic said all eight suspects had been transferred to a jail in Sarajevo, the Bosnian capital.
He identified the other six suspects as Veselin Cancar, Momir Glisic, Zeljko Mitrovic, Dragoje Radanovic, Momir Skakavac and Goran Vasic.
The Bosnian Serb SRNA news agency reported three men were arrested in the southeastern town of Foca, and the others in the Sarajevo suburb of Lukavica and nearby Pale.
Although the war ended nine years ago the UN court's two most wanted suspects -- Bosnian Serb wartime leader Radovan Karadzic and his army chief, Ratko Mladic -- remain at large.
The two are believed to be hiding in Serb-controlled parts of the former Yugoslavia where they are still considered heroes by diehard supporters.
The international community has been increasing pressure on Serb authorities to arrest war crimes suspects ahead of a report by chief UN prosecutor Carla Del Ponte to the United Nations on November 23.
In a briefing to the Security Council last week, the top international envoy to Bosnia, Paddy Ashdown, criticised the Bosnian Serbs for their "complete failure" to cooperate with the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY) in The Hague.
Ashdown warned the former Yugoslav republic's hopes of joining the European Union and NATO were being jeopardised by its failure to work with the UN court.
Post-war Bosnia consists of two semi-independent entities -- the Serbs' Republika Srpska and the Muslim-Croat Federation.
11/15/2004 - 23:21 GMT - AFP