The Serb Orthodox Church in Bosnia denounced Thursday's pre-dawn swoop on the priest's home by 40 British and US NATO troops as "terrorism".

But as Karadzic remained on the run for seven years after being indicted by the UN war crimes tribunal in The Hague on charges of genocide during Bosnia's 1992-95 war, NATO's secretary-general was unrepentant.

"I would have preferred of course for this operation to be a success," de Hoop Scheffer told a news conference in Brussels on Friday.

But he added Karadzic and other fugitives such as former Bosnian Serb commander Ratko Mladic "cannot hide, they cannot run forever".

"Everybody's doing everything he or she can to get them, because I think it's important for the region that they should go where they should be -- to the international tribunal at The Hague."

NATO troops used explosives to blast into the priest's home near an Orthodox church in Karadzic's wartime stronghold of Pale, which they raided after receiving a credible tip-off that the Bosnian Serb wartime leader was hiding there.

The priest, reportedly a Karadzic's supporter, had told the Montenegrin daily Publika in March: "I believe it is a duty of every Serb priest to help him (Karadzic)."

The priest and his son remained Friday in hospital in coma.

"They remain in a coma. They are still on life-support machines," said a doctor in the Tuzla hospital, asking not to be named.

But Bosnian Serbs hinted that NATO troops beat up Jeremija Starovlah and his 28-year-old son Aleksandar during the raid.

"It is being assumed that the injuries were inflicted by blunt objects," Bosnian Serb President Dragan Cavic said, while a priest in the Orthodox diocese where the NATO raid took place, echoed his comments.

"We are almost certain that they have been maltreated, and beaten," priest Vanja Jovanovic told AFP.

The NATO-led Stabilisation Force (SFOR) strongly denied the allegations.

"That's absolutely false. They were hurt instantly from the secondary blast," SFOR spokesman Dave Sullivan told AFP.

Bosnia's joint presidency called on SFOR to carry out an investigation into the incident and appealed for calm.

However, the Serb member of the presidency Borislav Paravac condemned SFOR saying the "excessive use of force was obvious".

On Friday church officials threatened to cut off relations with international and local authorities if SFOR troops who carried out the operation are not punished.

"The crime of terrorism is ... even more serious as it has been perpetrated by those who present themselves as the main fighters against terrorism," a statement from the Orthodox diocese where the operation took place said.

It was the alliance's third unsuccessful attempt to catch Karadzic, who last time evaded capture by just a couple of hours.

Karadzic has been on the run since 1995 despite a five-million-dollar (3.9-million-euro) reward offered by the US State Department for information leading to his arrest.

The charges against him relate in particular to the 1992-1995 siege of Sarajevo, in which some 10,000 civilians died, and the 1995 massacre of more than 7,000 Muslim men and boys in the eastern Bosnian town of Srebrenica.

The UN court's chief prosecutor Carla Del Ponte has repeatedly accused the Bosnian Serb authorities and some members of the Serb Orthodox church of helping Karadzic evade arrest.

In 1997 SFOR troops killed Bosnian Serb war crimes suspect Simo Drljaca and his driver in an exchange of fire, while two years later SFOR killed another Bosnian Serb war crimes suspect, Dragan Gagic, who tried to escape arrest.

WAR.WIRE