SARAJEVO, Oct 7 (AFP) - NATO-led peacekepeers raided Thursday a hotel near the wartime base of top war crimes fugitive Ratko Mladic, the Bosnian Serb military commander during the 1992-95 conflict, officials said.
The NATO-led Stabilisation Force (SFOR) "conducted an unannounced search of premises in Vlasenica," an SFOR statement said, adding that the operation was part of broader efforts to track down fugitive war crimes suspects.
Bosnian Serb police said SFOR searched the Palas hotel in Vlasenica, 15 kilometers (nine miles) north of Han Pijesak which was Mladic's headquarters during the war.
"SFOR conducted an operation in the hotel Palas from 10:15 am (0815) until 11:00 am (0900 GMT)," a local police chief, Dragomir Peric, told AFP.
He said Bosnian Serb police were present at the scene but were unaware of the purpose of the raid.
Mladic and his wartime political chief, Radovan Karadzic, are wanted by the UN war crimes tribunal at The Hague on charges including genocide.
They are notably accused of masterminding and carrying out the brutal siege of Sarajevo and the massacre of more than 7,000 Muslim men and boys at the eastern town of Srebrenica in 1995.
It is believed that Mladic is hiding in neighbouring Serbia-Montenegro and Karadzic in eastern parts of Serb-run Bosnia, although local authorities deny any knowledge of their whereabouts.
The failure of NATO troops to find either man is a thorn in the side of the international peacekeeping effort here, which is due to hand over security responsibilities to an EU force in December.