Europe's most-wanted man was arrested in the early hours of Thursday in a village in northern Serbia, but there were immediately questions over whether the 69-year-old Bosnian Serb was fit to stand trial after he claimed to be ill.

"Today, early in the morning, we arrested Ratko Mladic," Serbian President Boris Tadic announced. "The extradition process is under way," he added, referring to the process to transfer Mladic to the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY), a UN tribunal based in The Hague.

The indictment against him cites the Srebrenica massacre, the 44-month siege of Sarajevo, and the creation of camps and detention centres during the 1992-1995 war, all as part of a campaign directed against Bosnian Muslims.

At Srebrenica, 8,000 Muslim men and boys were rounded up and massacred, Europe's worst atrocity since World War II.

AFP