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Bosnian police arrested nine ethnic Serbs on Wednesday suspected of taking part in the killings of 44 Muslim civilians in a village at the start of the 1990s war, prosecutors said.

The nine men, mostly former soldiers and two police commanders, are suspected of having "planned, organised and taken part" in the killings and persecution of Muslim civilians in the area of Sokolac in eastern Bosnia in September 1992, a prosecutors' statement said.

When the Bosbian Serb army attacked the village of Novoseoci, men were separated from women and children before being taken to a rubbish dump and shot, the statement said.

The victims, aged between 14 and 82, were buried there while women and children were expelled from the village.

After the executions, a village mosque was destroyed and its debris brought to the dump and thrown over the victims' remains.

All but one of the victims, which include one woman, were exhumed and identified after the 1992-1995 war.

Former Bosnian Serb general Radislav Krstic, serving a 35-year jail term handed down by a UN court for his role in the 1995 Srebrenica genocide, is also a suspect in the case and will be questioned, the statement said.

Another suspect is currently in Canada and his extradition will be sought, it added.

Bosnia's 1992-1995 war between its Croats, Muslims and Serbs claimed some 100,000 lives.

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