Milorad Dodik, the main political leader for ethnic Serbs in Bosnia-Herzegovina, faces criminal charges for denying massacres of civilians during the 1992-95 war, municipal officials said on Thursday.

The charges relate to the May 1995 shelling by Serb forces of Tuzla, then a UN-designated “safe haven” inhabited mainly by Bosnian Muslims, when one blast in the town centre killed 71 mostly young people and wounded more than 150. Mr Dodik, prime minister of the nearly autonomous Serb-dominated “entity” covering almost half of the country, said the bloody incident had been staged.