PALE (Bosnia), March 27: European Union peacekeepers raided the homes on Thursday of relatives of Bosnian Serb wartime leader Radovan Karadzic, a genocide suspect on the run from the UN war crimes court.

Some 20 vehicles of the EUFOR peacekeeping force surrounded the house where Karadzic’s wife Ljiljana Zelen-Karadzic lives in Pale, his stronghold in the 1992-95 Bosnia war, lying about 16 km southeast of the capital Sarajevo.

Italian carabinieri also searched the homes of Karadzic’s daughter Sonja and suspected Karadzic supporter Smiljka Popov.

“The aim of the operation is to find material and information that could assist the ICTY (International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia) in the search for persons indicted for war crimes,” Treloar said.

Treloar said the operation finished around noon. “It is believed that these people are associated with Radovan Karadzic’s support network. There are items of interest that have been taken and they will be examined,” he added.

The UN war crimes tribunal in The Hague has indicted Karadzic and his military leader Ratko Mladic for genocide over the 1995 Srebrenica massacre of 8,000 Muslims and the 43-month siege of Sarajevo that claimed some 11,000 lives.—Reuters