Dutch troops of the NATO-led peacekeeping force in Bosnia captured two Bosnian Croat war crimes suspects yesterday, wounding one of them as they stormed his house in a night-time raid. The wounded man, Mr Vlatko Kupreskic, who opened fire in an attempt to escape, has been indicted for one of the most notorious massacres of the Bosnian war.
Mr Kupreskic received emergency surgery before being flown to the Netherlands, where he was handed over to the United Na tions criminal tribunal for the former Yugoslavia at The Hague.
The raid came as President Clinton, who is due to visit Bosnia next week, announced US troops would stay in the country beyond next June's withdrawal deadline.
The arrests sparked angry protests by Croats in Bosnia and jubilation in western capitals, but Russia accused the troops of acting outside their mandate.
NATO sources said the action - the most dramatic snatching of war crimes suspects since British troops seized a Bosnian Serb and killed another in Prijedor on July 10th - took place near Vitez in central Bosnia at about 1 a.m.
Croat police said the village of Santici was surrounded by Sfor troops during the operation, in which Mr Kupreskic's house was demolished. His wife told the Croat news agency that some 15 Sfor soldiers blasted their way into the house.
The other suspect, Mr Anto Furundzija, was arrested outside his house without a struggle in a separate operation. He is now in the court's detention centre at Scheveningen, near The Hague.
Mr Furundzija, a paramilitary commander, is the subject of a sealed indictment from the tribunal and there was no immediate confirmation from The Hague of the charges against him.
Bosnian radio broadcast a statement from Sfor urging Croats to stay calm after the arrest of the two men. Hours later, a large group of Croats staged a furious demonstration in Vitez.
The NATO chief, Gen Javier Solana, telephoned President Franjo Tudjman of Croatia to urge him to discourage any Bosnian Croat retaliation.
Mr Kupreskic is indicted along with six other members of the Bosnian Croat HVO militia - two of them his brothers - for killing unarmed Muslim villagers in Ahmici and eight other settlements in the Vitez area of the Lasva Valley in April 1993.
The six accused men already in The Hague gave themselves up in October, after pressure from Mr Tudjman. All pleaded not guilty.
At least 103 Muslims, including 33 women and children, were slaughtered in Ahmici when the attackers moved from house to house, killing civilians and using tracer rounds and explosives to destroy dwellings. The killings occurred during a vicious sideshow to the war between Bosnian Serbs and Muslims.
The Kupreskic brothers are specifically charged with bursting into the home of a Muslim family and slaughtering the mother, father and two children with automatic weapons before setting fire to the house.
The German Foreign Minister, Dr Klaus Kinkel, applauded the capture, saying war criminals would not be able to escape justice. However, as after the Prije dor operation, Russia opposed the action saying the Sfor mandate did not include the use of force to detain people charged by The Hague.
It said such "seize-and-run" tactics placed the entire Bosnian peace process in jeopardy. Sfor troops are authorised to arrest indicted war criminals when they encounter them in the course of their duties.
Bosnia's most notorious indic ted war criminals, former Bosnian Serb president Dr Radovan Kara dzic and former army chief Gen Ratko Mladic, are still at liberty in the Bosnian Serb republic, heavily guarded by loyal militias.
Mr Clinton said in Washington that US troops would remain in Bosnia to provide "a safety net and a helping hand. If we pull out before the job is done, Bosnia almost certainly will fall back into violence, chaos and war every bit as violent" as the conflict which killed or wounded tens of thousands of Bosnians between 1991 and 1995.