NATO peacekeepers hunting Bosnian Serb war crimes fugitive Radovan Karadzic mounted a night-time raid on his old stronghold Pale yesterday, wounding a priest and his son but failing to find Karadzic.
"We did not find the individual we were looking for," said Captain Dave Sullivan, spokesman for the NATO-led force SFOR.
"We conducted a focused operation ... to detain Radovan Karadzic. We searched an administrative accommodation building but we failed to locate him," Sullivan said.
Around 40 American, British and German troops aboard helicopters and vehicles took part in the raid, which centered on the town's Serbian Orthdox church and nearby priest's accommodation.
The wife of Father Jeremija Starovlah told reporters her husband and son were injured when troops burst into the family home next to the church.
"We were awoken by shooting. Soldiers burst into the house and immediately took them to another room ... a soldier put a gun to my head. I heard my husband cry for help, but I could do nothing," she said.
"I don't know if they are still alive."
A NATO spokesman said the two were flown by helicopter to a US base in northern Bosnia near Tuzla and were taken to the city's hospital for treatment.
Officials there declined to state their condition.
The raid began when a convoy of US troops rolled into Pale shortly after 1:15am, according to a resident who said he saw the entire operation.
Witnesses reported hearing gunfire and an explosion, as at least four NATO helicopters hovered over the center of the town, in the mountains above the Bosnian capital.
"Despite precautions, two civilians were injured inside the house. They received blast injuries," Sullivan said.
The gravity of the injuries to the priest and his son was not known. It appeared to be the first time that the Karadzic manhunt had resulted in injury to civilians and it was likely to anger Bosnian Serbs, many of whom view Karadzic as a hero and the church as inviolate.
SFOR has in recent months intensified its seven-year hunt for Karadzic, wanted by the UN war crimes tribunal in The Hague on two charges of genocide for the slaughter of Bosnian Muslims in the 1992 to 1995 war.
Troops have arrested three suspected members of Karadzic's alleged "support network" in raids over the past three months but set them free after interrogation lasting several days.
The former leader of the breakaway Bosnian Serb republic has a price of US$5 million on his head.
He and his former army commander General Ratko Mladic rank as the most wanted Balkan fugitives still at large.
Both are accused of genocide for the 1995 Srebrenica massacre of up to 8,000 Muslim men and boys, as well as the siege of Sarajevo in which some 12,000 were killed.
Karadzic is long believed to have moved between various remote hideouts in mountainous eastern Bosnia and neighboring Montenegro, with the help of supporters.
In a major operation in January, a large contingent of NATO troops spent three days in Pale searching the church, a local clinic and a number of buildings associated with the Karadzic family.
NATO sources at the time said they were acting on a tip that he had been forced to seek urgent medical attention in his old stronghold where his wife still lives.
‘ABSURD MISTAKE’: The election commission said that there had been a failure to anticipate turnout after 14 polling stations ran short of ballot papers South Korean riot police yesterday cleared protesters from a Seoul polling station after a 35-hour blockade sparked by a shortage of ballot papers during local elections earlier this week. Wednesday’s election was the first nationwide vote since South Korean President Lee Jae-myung took office following the ouster of Yoon Suk-yeol over his short-lived martial law declaration. Lee’s ruling Democratic Party swept most races, but failed to flip the crucial Seoul mayoral seat. The South Korean National Election Commission apologized, blaming a failure to anticipate turnout after 14 polling stations in Seoul ran short of ballot papers. Some polling stations stayed open until 10pm to
France experienced its hottest spring on record, the French weather service said on Tuesday, after an exceptional early heat wave that also broke highs for the season in England and Wales. Meteo-France said the average nationwide temperature over March to May was 13.8°C — about 1.7°C above the norm, and surpassing records set in 2011 and 2020. “The warmest spring since records began in 1900,” it said in a bulletin. All three months were warmer than average, but the onset of an “unprecedented heatwave” late last month pushed the mercury to highs typically seen at the height of the summer. “Our country had never
A Sherpa guide was found crawling to base camp on Mount Everest a week after he went missing and was reunited with his family, who had given up hope he would return. Dawa Sherpa was last seen on Friday last week descending the mountain, but he did not reach base camp even though his client did. The pair were among the last climbers on the mountain as the climbing season came to an end and the route was dismantled. Dawa was located by a cleaning crew on Thursday morning as he was crawling down the snowy slopes around the Khumbu Icefall, just above
Chinese authorities are snuffing out any remembrance of the deadly 1989 military crackdown on student-led pro-democracy protests in Tiananmen Square, which happened 37 years ago yesterday, in a further tightening of a years-long campaign to erase what happened from public memory. Police told relatives of the victims they would not be allowed to visit a cemetery in Beijing on the anniversary of the crackdown, a person with knowledge of the matter said. Relatives of the victims visited the cemetery on the anniversary for more than 30 years to read memorial statements with police keeping watch, Amnesty International said. Hundreds of people,
RSS