The investigation by journalist Ezio Gavazzeni has already led to investigations being opened in Italy and Bosnia and Herzegovina over the allegations dating back to the wars in ex-Yugoslavia.

"Italians were the overwhelming majority of these 'weekend snipers'," he wrote in the book "Weekend Snipers: An Investigation into the Human Safaris in Sarajevo".

Gavazzeni said the snipers also operated in other parts of Bosnia and cited a source saying that some paid to shoot at Serbs.

He cited an unnamed former French soldier who said he accompanied small groups of "weekend snipers" -- no more than three at a time -- to Bosnia between 1992 and 1995.

"An Italian agent friend of mine told me that between 1991 and 1995, around 230 Italian archers took part," the ex-soldier is quoted as saying in the book, using a code name used for snipers.

The man, who also worked as a military contractor, said that "a few less from France and Belgium, some from Switzerland and even some for Austria".

He said he took part in six transfers from Italy, two from Belgium and one from France.

Among the snipers there were "notaries, lawyers and high-ranking doctors, businessmen... generally people over 50 and well off," he added.

He said that their travel was organised through the Milan branch of a security company based in Belgium.

Italian prosecutors last month spoke to an 80-year-old man, a former truck driver, suspected of being a weekend sniper and the investigation is ongoing.

During the nearly four-year siege of Sarajevo that began in April 1992 some 11,541 men, women and children were killed and more than 50,000 people wounded by Bosnian Serb forces, according to official figures.

Il Giornale newspaper reported last year that the would-be snipers paid Bosnian Serb forces up to the equivalent of 100,000 euros ($115,000) per day to shoot at civilians below them.

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