Police in Bosnia on Thursday arrested 11 people suspected of fighting alongside Islamist forces in Syria and Iraq and assisting terrorist activities in the two countries.

"Eleven suspects were arrested and searches are ongoing on several locations" including in the capital Sarajevo and other towns, a police statement said.

Russia on Tuesday refused to endorse a U.N. resolution on Bosnia that Moscow said would push the Balkan country towards NATO and the European Union -- a scenario that led to the conflict in Ukraine. 

The U.N. Security Council adopted the resolution backing the EU military force in Bosnia despite Russia's absention, but the outcome reflected East-West tensions over Ukraine.

Bosnian Muslim, Croat and Serb nationalist parties won the country's three-man presidency and dominate in both central and regional parliaments, final results of this month's general elections showed on Monday.

Bakir Izetbegovic of the main Muslim SDA party won his second four-year mandate in the collective presidency, according to the results announced by the central election commission.

Bosnia voted Sunday to choose new leaders and a parliament amid mounting social discontent in a country plagued with corruption and ethnic disputes hampering its approach to the European Union.

Nearly 20 years since a devastating war between its Croats, Muslims and Serbs the country is one of Europe's poorest and remains split along ethnic lines.

The Dutch state will appeal a court ruling that found it liable for the deaths of over 300 Bosnian Muslim men and boys during the 1995 Srebrenica massacre, the defense ministry said on Thursday.

Three months ago judges ruled that Dutch UN peacekeepers should not have expelled the more than 300 victims from a U.N. base at Potocari near Srebrenica in mid-July 1995 after it was overrun by Bosnian Serb forces during the country civil war.

Former Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic "did not know" of the 1995 massacre of thousands of Muslims at Srebrenica, his lawyer said Thursday, seeking an acquittal in his genocide trial.

"There is not a single piece of evidence that Dr Karadzic planned or ordered the execution of prisoners (at Srebrenica), or that he knew about it," his legal advisor Peter Robinson told the Hague-based U.N. Yugoslav war crimes court.

A defiant Radovan Karadzic on Wednesday told the Yugoslav war crimes court he was "a true friend" to Bosnia's Muslims, against whom he is accused of committing some of Europe's worst atrocities since World War II.

Speaking during closing arguments in his genocide and war crimes trial, Karadzic, 69, told the Hague-based U.N. tribunal "I was really a true friend to the Muslims".

With the world on high alert over foreign fighters joining jihadist ranks in Syria and Iraq, Balkan states are launching efforts to clamp down on recruiting in their region, considered fertile ground by Islamists.

Of the more than 20 million people in southeast Europe, more than five million are Muslims, and an economic slump in weak states battered by past wars has fired up some of the disenfranchised.

Former Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic was the "driving force" behind ethnic cleansing during Bosnia's bloody civil war, including some of the worst atrocities since World War II, the Yugoslav war crimes court heard on Monday.

"The policy of ethnic cleansing has been fully exposed as has Dr. Karadzic as its driving force," U.N. prosecutor Alan Tieger said during closing arguments at the marathon five-year trial before the Hague-based court.

Bosnian Serbs are closely watching Scotland's independence referendum, hoping if Scots vote to break away from Britain it would set a precedent that could boost their own chances of proclaiming a separate state.