NATO troops launch manhunt in Bosnia
Indicted war crimes suspect was target, spokesman says
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(CNN) -- NATO forces launched a "large-scale operation" Saturday morning in Bosnia to hunt for a wanted war crimes suspect, according to a spokesman with the NATO Stabilization Force.
The search began "on short notice" about 2 a.m. (8 p.m. Friday ET) in Pale, Bosnia-Herzegovina, 16 kilometers (10 miles) southeast of the capital, Sarajevo, said NATO spokesman Dave Sullivan.
"We received information that the person indicted for war crimes may have had a prior injury and this person might be seeking refuge in a hospital or similar medical facility," Sullivan said.
Sullivan would not identify the wanted man.
In 1995, a peace accord signed in Dayton, Ohio, ended the war between Bosnian Muslims and Bosnian Serbs. The conflict was Europe's most deadly since World War II. More than 200,000 people died.
According to the War Crimes Tribunal in The Hague, Netherlands, 20 indicted suspects are still at large, including former Bosnian Serb President Radovan Karadzic and his top general, Ratko Mladic.
The U.N. tribunal indicted the two men for the massacre of up to 8,000 Muslim men and boys in the eastern town of Srebrenica in 1995 and the siege of Sarajevo, in which more than 10,000 people died.
The move by NATO is part of its stepped-up campaign to bring the wartime Bosnian Serb leader and genocide suspect to trial. (Karadzic profile)
The alliance is also targeting people who have enabled one of the world's most wanted men to remain a fugitive eight years after the war ended. The international community has frozen bank accounts and imposed visa restrictions on Karadzic and his support network.
Karadzic remains popular among nationalist Serbs, especially in the east Bosnian region, which is still politically controlled by hardliners.
Human rights activists have criticized NATO for failing to capture Karadzic and Mladic.
In August 2003, NATO forces took up positions outside the home of Karadzic's daughter in the Bosnian Serb wartime stronghold of Pale.
The NATO force failed to find Mladic during a raid on his mother's house after she died in August 2003.
Troops involved in Saturday's operation come from the United States, Germany, Italy, Hungary and other countries, Sullivan said.
