Serbs angry as priest hurt in Nato Karadzic swoop

Thousands of Bosnian Serbs angrily denounced Nato yesterday after a priest and his son were seriously wounded in a failed attempt to capture top war crimes fugitive Radovan Karadzic.

Bosnian Serb political and religious leaders as well as the government in neighbouring Serbia condemned the Nato-led force's night-time swoop in Karadzic's old stronghold of Pale. Around 3,000 people shouting anti-Western slogans gathered outside the Orthodox church in the small mountain town where the two were wounded after troops of the Sfor peacekeeping force blew open a door in the middle of the night.

Father Jeremija Starovlah and his son were in critical condition after undergoing surgery, a hospital spokeswoman said. Blood stains could be seen on the walls and floor of their damaged home near the church, a Reuters cameraman said.

The United Nations war crimes tribunal in The Hague has charged Karadzic with genocide in the slaughter of up to 8,000 unarmed Muslim men and boys in the Srebrenica massacre of 1995 and the 1992-95 siege of Sarajevo in which 12,000 were killed.

But many people here regard their wartime leader as a hero and their Orthodox churches as inviolate. One protester wore a Karadzic mask and others held anti-Natobanners. "The international community showed that nothing is sacred and untouchable for them," said parliament speaker Dragan Kalinic, a wartime Karadzic ally.

The crowd later dispersed. Serbian Religions Minister Milan Radulovic called breaking into a church and a priest's home a "barbaric act". Bosnian Serb bishops meeting in Pale denounced it as a "terrorist attack." But there was a predictably tough response to the protest by Bosnia's international peace overseer, Paddy Ashdown. Bosnian Serb authorities could have averted such an event, had they done more to try and capture Karadzic, he told a news conference.

For the past six years, Karadzic is believed to have kept on the move between various remote hideouts in mountainous east Bosnia and neighbouring Montenegro.

Western officials have often suspected Orthodox priests of sheltering him in monasteries. In recent months, Natohas intensified its hunt for him, mounting a three-day search in and around Pale in January which resulted in the subsequent arrest of three suspected members of Karadzic's alleged "support network".

They were later freed. Starovlah was quoted last week as saying it was the duty of every priest to help Karadzic, because he prevented genocide of the Serbs by Bosnian Muslims.

Captain Dave Sullivan said Sfor had conducted a "focused operation" to detain Karadzic on the basis of "very credible" information that he was in Pale. It failed to locate him but "this brings us one step closer to this individual."

"We were awoken by shooting," the priest's wife Vitorka said. "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."

But Nato denied any shots were fired by the 40 US and other Nato troops who took part in the raid. Starovlah and his son were injured "despite precautions" as troops blasted open the door to their home, Sullivan said.

The former leader of the breakaway Bosnian Serb Republic has a price of $5 million on his head. He and his army chief Ratko Mladic are the most wanted Balkan fugitives still at large.