Protesters have set fire to government buildings and fought with police on the third day of Bosnia’s worst civil unrest since its 1992-95 war.

In the northern town of Tuzla, masked youths, many sporting football insignia, stormed and torched the seat of the local authority while a section of the presidency building in the capital Sarajevo was also set alight with a flare thrown through a window.

The protests have spread across the country.

Police used water cannon as demonstrators who had already attacked local government headquarters in Sarajevo turned on the Bosnian presidency building.

Anger over massive unemployment and political inertia triggered the disturbances, starting in Tuzla, which has been hit hard by factory closures.

Many claim authorities have stood by idly as several state firms collapsed after privatisation.

Well over 100 people, many of them police officers, have been injured in Tuzla alone.

The civil unrest is unprecedented in postwar Bosnia, where Serbs, Croats and Muslim Bosniaks have tolerated political stagnation for years rather than risk a return to conflict.