SARAJEVO, May 5 (Reuters) - Bosnian police are hunting foreign-born Muslims who fought in the 1992-95 war and stayed in Bosnia as illegal aliens, a spokesman said on Tuesday.

"We arrested two people on Monday night in the central Zenica-Doboj region," said a police spokesman for Bosnia's Muslim-Croat federation, which is coordinating an operation involving all police agencies in the country.

He said those arrested were "foreign citizens suspected of illegal residence in Bosnia" and were handed over to the immigration service.

Thousands of Islamic fighters fought during the war with Bosnian Muslims against Bosnian Croats and Bosnian Serbs. Most of them left the country under U.S. pressure in the late 1990s but some remained after marrying locally.

Local media reported that Syria-born Aimen Awad and Iraqi-born Abdulah Baaura were arrested in the central town of Zenica but the spokesman declined to confirm their names.

Awad, who has lived in the Balkans since 1982 and fought in the El Mujaheed unit of foreign fighters during the war, has complained he would be jailed in Syria for fighting abroad. Both are married to Bosnian women.

Human rights groups, including Amnesty International, have called on Bosnia not to deport foreign-born Muslim fighters to countries where they might face abuse, torture and punishment. (Reporting by Daria Sito-Sucic, editing by Adam Tanner and Richard Meares)

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