THE HAGUE (Reuters) - The Yugoslavia war crimes tribunal sentenced Bosnian Serb general Zdravko Tolimir to life in prison on Wednesday for his role in the 1995 Srebrenica massacre, Europe's worst atrocity since World War Two.

U.N. judges said Tolimir, 64, an intelligence chief and close aide to Bosnian Serb military commander Ratko Mladic, planned and oversaw the killing of 8,000 Muslim men and boys after the town of Srebenica was overrun in July.

The massacre was part of a process of ethnic cleansing carried out by nationalist Serbs determined to carve out a Serb state in Bosnia by removing all of the multi-ethnic province's Muslims and Croats. The 1992-95 war killed 100,000 people.

(Reporting by Ivana Sekularac; Editing by Mark Heinrich)