Belgrade - Serbia has launched a probe into alleged atrocities against the former Yugoslav army in Bosnia and issued arrest warrants against 19 people, including former top Muslim and Croat leaders in Sarajevo, officials said Thursday.

A spokeswoman for the Serbian war crimes prosecutor, Ivana Ramic, confirmed for radio B92 that an investigation was underway against people suspected of committing war crimes early in the 1992-95 conflict, but refused to provide details.

The suspects allegedly committed war crimes against prisoners and using banned means of combat.

Declining to provide more details, Ramic only named an ambush on an army column in Sarajevo which left 42 soldiers, mostly conscripts, dead and more than 70 wounded in May 1992.

The Serbian Interior Ministry issued the arrest warrants on a demand from the prosecutor's office. Among those sought are Ejup Ganic and Stjepan Kljuic, wartime members of the Bosnian presidency, both residents of Sarajevo.

The disintegration of former Yugoslavia sparked a short war in Slovenia in 1991 and long conflicts in Croatia and Bosnia in 1991 and 1992.

Fighting was particularly hard and often gruesome in Bosnia, where Croats and Muslims were pitted against Serbs, who were supported by Serbia.

The war ended in late 1995 with the Dayton peace agreement, effectively a constitution which has set up a system of two ethnically-based entities that comprise Bosnia today.

Though fighting ceased 13 years ago, hatred persists and Bosnia remains divided along the ethnic, now even administrative lines, so the arrest of the suspects from Belgrade's warrant is unlikely.

Serbian justice in recent years launched war crimes charges, including against some against Serbs, but is yet to shrug off a poor image it earned with mock trials of top Western leaders, such as the then US president Bill Clinton and German chancellor Gerhard Schroeder.

Serbia also remains reluctant to arrest and bring to justice internationally wanted war crime suspects, such as the Bosnian Serb Ratko Mladic, held responsible for the massacre of 8,000 Muslims at Srebrenica in 1995. (dpa)