The United Nations war crimes tribunal at The Hague has dismissed an appeal by three former Bosnian Serb commanders against their convictions on charges of mass rape and torture.

The men - Dragoljub Kunarac, Radomir Kovac, and Zoran Vukovic - were convicted in February last year on charges of raping, torturing and enslaving Muslim women and girls during the conflict in Bosnia in the early 1990s.

They received sentences of between 12 and 28 years.

The landmark case was the first by The Hague tribunal to deal solely with such charges, treating them as crimes against humanity - a charge second only to genocide in severity.

From the newsroom of the BBC World Service