Wife of Bosnian war crimes suspect killed in raid

The wife of a Bosnian Serb war crimes suspect was killed in a shoot-out when European Union (EUFOR) peacekeepers moved in to arrest her husband at their home yesterday, doctors in Bosnia said.

Suspect Dragomir Abazovic and the couple's 11-year-old son were also shot and injured in the morning raid in a village near Rogatica in eastern Bosnia and there had been an exchange of gunfire, police said.

"Rada Abazovic died of kidney and abdominal wounds," a doctor in Foca hospital told Reuters by telephone. Hospital officials said the husband was treated for serious head injuries.

Bosnian Serb President Dragan Cavic condemned the operation by the peacekeeping force, which took over from Nato-led troops last year, and urged EUFor commander Major-General Gian Marco Chiarini to investigate the incident and find the perpetrators.

"This is the EUFor's most severe degradation and (represents) a complete destruction of confidence in its force. It is tragic that the result of their operation should be the death of a wife of an alleged suspect and the injury of his young son," Mr Cavic said. EUFor said in a statement the operation was conducted in accordance with a warrant issued in 1999 by the Sarajevo cantonal court for Abazovic's arrest for crimes in the Rogatica area during the 1992-95 ethnic war between Serbs, Bosnian Muslims and Croats.

It said Abazovic started first to shoot at the troops and subsequently injured himself.

"As EUFor troops were deploying at the location, EUFor troops were fired upon. They fired back in self-defence," the statement said.

Bullet-riddled EUFor jeeps stood outside the Abazovic home. EUFor soldiers, some wearing Italian Carabinieri insignia and some in civilian clothes, stood silently in front of the house. Some pulled balaclavas over their heads as reporters arrived at the scene.

The troops' hunt for war crimes fugitives has caused accidental casualties in past raids.

In April 2004, the brother of indicted war crimes suspect Milan Lukic was killed when local police raided his house. Lukic was eventually arrested in Argentina.

That same month an explosive charge badly wounded a priest and his son when troops blasted their way into a rectory in the town of Pale while seeking top war crimes fugitive Radovan Karadzic, the former Bosnian Serb leader wanted for genocide.