Ratko Mladic, wanted by UN prosecutors for war crimes during the Bosnian civil war, has been arrested in Serbia after a decade in hiding.

Serbian President Boris Tadic confirmed the arrest of the former Bosnian Serb army chief at a news conference.

Gen Mladic is accused of a key role in the massacre of at least 7,500 men and boys at Srebrenica in 1995.

He was the most prominent Bosnian war crimes suspect at large since the arrest of Radovan Karadzic in 2008.

President Tadic said work was under way to extradite Gen Mladic to the international war crimes tribunal in The Hague.

The detention, he said, had closed one chapter in Serbian history, bringing the country and the region closer to reconciliation.

It had also opened the doors to membership of the European Union, he added.

Gen Mladic was said by Serbian media to have been arrested in Vojvodina, a northern province of Serbia, in the early hours of Thursday morning. President Tadic would only confirm he had been arrested "on Serbian soil". Top suspect.

Gen Mladic was indicted by the UN war crimes tribunal in The Hague in 1995 for genocide over the killings that July at Srebrenica - the worst single atrocity in Europe since World War II - and other crimes.

Having lived freely in the Serbian capital, Belgrade, he disappeared after the arrest of former Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic in 2001.

Speculation mounted that Gen Mladic would soon be arrested when Mr Karadzic was captured in Belgrade in July 2008.

Just before news of Thursday’s arrest, UN war crimes chief prosecutor Serge Brammertz accused Serbia of failing to do enough to find Gen Mladic.

"The capture is the biggest obligation of Serbia," he said in a report sent to the UN Security Council.

"Until now efforts by Serbia to detain fugitives have not been sufficient."

Related Stories:

How Srebrenica fell