Former Yugoslav army officer denies executions

A former Yugoslav army officer has denied his troops executed at least 200 Croat hospital patients in 1991.

Retired General Mile Mrksic surrendered to the UN war crimes tribunal in The Hague on Wednesday.

Mrksic, 55, has pleaded "not guilty" to all six counts in his indictment.

He faces life in prison if convicted.

Former Croatian Serb rebel leader Milan Martic also gave himself up to the court.

Mrksic commanded a Yugoslav army unit which besieged and shelled the eastern city of Vukovar for several months in 1991, reducing it to ruins.

He later commanded Croatian Serb troops under Martic, who is charged with a rocket attack on the Croatian capital of Zagreb in 1995 which killed at least five people and injured dozens.

The indictment against Mrksic alleges his troops removed at least 200 non-Serbs from the Vukovar hospital in November 1991 and transported them to a nearby pig farm, where most of them were shot and buried in a mass grave.

Mrksic is one of the so-called "Vukovar trio" who have been indicted on the same charge.

The other two former Yugoslav army officers - Miroslav Radic and Veselin Sljivancanin - are still free and have rejected a Yugoslav government demand to surrender voluntarily to the UN tribunal.