While the NATO-led Stabilization Force (SFOR) declined to name who the troops were hunting, spokesman Mathew Brock said that Karadzic was "of course the main person indicted for war crimes SFOR was assisting local authorities to find."

"We are not searching only for the person indicted for war crimes but also the supporting elements of that person and evidence and documents that could led us to further sighting of that person," Brock told AFP.

On the second day of the operation soldiers of the NATO-led Stabilization Force (SFOR) surrounded and were searching with dogs the house of Karadzic's wife Ljiljana.

Brock said that SFOR's search Saturday of medical facilities and other premises -- following a tip off that a person indicted for war crimes was in need of medical assistance -- had so far been unsuccessful.

However, he said the operation was ongoing and would last "as long as it takes."

Bosnian Serb police were also participating.

Police official Miroslav Popara told AFP that SFOR searched during the night the premises of the Serb Orthodox Church in Pale and a cultural center.

On Saturday peacekeepers went to an emergency aid center, the Bosnian Serb Red Cross offices and the medical practice of Karadzic's daughter Sonja.

Brock said the peacekeepers were met with full cooperation in the house of Ljiljana Karadzic, but did not say whether any evidence had been found.

SFOR said on Saturday that they had information that the person indicted for war crimes might be injured, adding however that the injuries did not have to be recent but the war crimes suspect might need an operation.

The number of SFOR soldiers was growing and they patrolled Pale throughout the night and early Sunday with their guns at the ready, an AFP correspondent said.

They cordoned off Pale, stopping and searching all vehicles entering or leaving the town.

The wartime leader of the Bosnian Serbs, Karadzic, 58, 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.

He is charged by the UN court in The Hague 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.

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

WAR.WIRE