"Karadzic was the main priority of our operation ... he was not found," Matthew Brock, an SFOR spokesman, told AFP in Pale.

Following a tip-off that Karadzic, who has eluded international troops for eight years, may be in need of medical attention, NATO-led Stabilization Force (SFOR) troops arrived in Pale Saturday and searched clinics and the home of his wife.

Brock said that documents and ammunition were taken from Ljiljana Karadzic's home.

"We hope that this particular documentation would lead to success in our future operations," he said without providing any details.

SFOR Captain Dennis Thaagaard, who participated in the search, said that evidence was found of Karadzic's contacts with his family.

"We have clear evidence that he had contacted his family and his inner support network," Thaagaard said.

Karadzic, 58, along with his military chief Ratko Mladic, has played cat-and-mouse with NATO-led troops since they were dispatched to Bosnia in 1996 to oversee the Dayton peace accord.

He is charged by the UN court with genocide and crimes against humanity during the 1992-95 war, notably for the siege of Sarajevo and the July 1995 massacre of more than 7,000 Bosnian Muslims in Srebrenica, Europe's worst single atrocity since World War II.

Karadzic is still seen as a hero among many in the Republika Srpska, the postwar entity which along with the Muslim-Croat Federation makes up Bosnia.

Over the past two years SFOR has conducted a series of failed operations to track him down.

Karadzic's daughter Sonja fumed at search of the house where she was with her mother and two children.

"I am outraged with SFOR because they are molesting my family and children. They are throwing our photos, documents and jewellery around and don't let us enter rooms that have already been searched," she told AFP in a telephone interview from inside the house.

She added that they had been "practically imprisoned" in the house since Saturday when SFOR surrounded it and she was allowed to leave only once when troops searched her medical practice.

She refused to talk about her father.

SFOR said they hoped to reduce the operation Sunday evening, but would maintain presence at checkpoints set up on all streets leading out of the town.

"SFOR would hope to finish the operation tomorrow (Monday) afternoon," Brock said.

SFOR said they detained one person known to support war crimes fugitives, and Bosnian Serb radio said a second person had been detained later.

Bosnian Serb police, who also took part in the operation, said SFOR also searched during the night the premises of the Serb Orthodox Church in Pale and a cultural center.

On Saturday soldiers also went to the offices of the Bosnian Serb Red Cross, which Ljiljana Karadzic previously managed.

WAR.WIRE