Police have pressed charges against five people and a number of still unidentified persons for the murder of Nacional weekly reporter Ivo Pukanic and the paper's head of marketing, Niko Franjic, and for conspiracy to commit murder, the head of the Police Director's office, Krunoslav Borovec, told a news conference on Friday.

Of the five people charged with murder and conspiracy to commit murder, two are on the run and police have issued warrants for their arrest.

The other three are Croatian nationals and they were taken today to the Zagreb County Court Investigating Centre, along with two other persons suspected of aiding the perpetrators after they committed the crime. One of them is a 54-year-old national of Montenegro and the other a 25-year-old national of Serbia.

On October 29, around 5 pm, the two men met with the perpetrators near the Croatian-Serbian border, when they were all arrested.

On Wednesday and Thursday police arrested 11 people aged between 24 and 38, raided 17 apartments, houses, holiday houses and vehicles in the area of Zagreb, Lika-Senj and Sisak-Moslavina counties and seized a number of different weapons, mobile phones and memory cards for mobile phones.

The seized items were shown to reporters at the news conference at the Zagreb Police Directorate.

Police officials did not reveal the identity of the five arrested people, but according to unofficial reports, police have arrested Robert and Luka Matanic and Amar Mafalani - who are charged with the murder of Pukanic and Franjic, and Svetozar Djurovic of Montenegro and Milenko Kuzmanovic of Serbia, who are suspected of aiding and abetting in the commission of the crime.

The five men are expected to be remanded in custody.