BELGRADE, August 5, 2008 (AFP) - Serbia's war crimes prosecution said Tuesday it has charged a former mayor in connection with the murder of some 700 Bosnian Muslims at the outbreak of Bosnia's war in 1992.

Branko Grujic, the former mayor of Zvornik, was indicted along with former local military chief Branko Popovic for 'war crimes committed against civilians' in the eastern Bosnian town, the prosecution said in a statement.

The two were charged with the 'capture, inhumane treatment and murder of about 700 people' near Zvornik. So far, 270 victims have been exhumed from two Bosnian mass graves and later identified.

In 1992, Serb forces overran swathes of eastern Bosnia, including Zvornik, killing many and expelling almost all non-Serbs during their notorious 'ethnic cleansing' campaign.

The so-called Zvornik case, which includes two trials already under way before Serbia's special war crimes court, was the first handed over to local justice from the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY), based in The Hague.