Convicted Bosnian Serb war criminal Mladić dies aged 84

Convicted Bosnian Serb war criminal Ratko Mladić has died in a UN prison at The Hague aged 84.

He was jailed for life in 2017 for genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity during the wars in the former Yugoslavia in 1992-95.

After the Bosnian war, he went on the run for 16 years until he was finally tracked down in rural Serbia in 2011 and put on trial in the Dutch city.

The sentence for the man known as the "Butcher of Bosnia" was upheld on appeal in 2021. He was being given palliative care in the hospital of the UN detention facility, where he died.

News of his death was first reported by Serbian media and later confirmed by a UN official.

In May, a UN court at The Hague rejected a bid for his release from jail as he was nearing the end of his life.

The judge agreed his situation was "dire" but ruled that he was receiving "comprehensive and compassionate treatment" in prison.

Mladić commanded Bosnian Serb forces in the 1990s against the Bosnian Croat and Bosniak (Bosnian Muslim) armies.

During the war his troops committed "ethnic cleansing" in Bosnia-Herzegovina, besieged the main city of Sarajevo with the deaths of more than 10,000 people, and carried out the massacre of 8,000 men and boys at Srebrenica.