NATO troops launched an operation to arrest Ratko Mladic, one of the most wanted war crimes suspects in Bosnia, but failed to find him during a raid on his mother's house, carried out just a few hours after she died. The operation, the first known attempt to arrest the wartime Bosnian Serb army commander, took place in Kasindol, near Sarajevo at the home of Mladic's mother who passed away Tuesday, a statement by the NATO-led Stabilisation Force (SFOR) in Bosnia said. "This afternoon SFOR conducted an operation intended to detain Ratko Mladic who is under indictment by the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia for war crimes," said the statement. "This operation did not result in the detention of Ratko Mladic," SFOR said offering condolences to the family members. The troops searched the home of the late Stana Mladic after receiving a tip-off, said SFOR spokesman Dale MacEachern. Mladic, 60, and Bosnian Serb (Christian orthodox) wartime leader Radovan Karadzic -- who also remains at large -- have been sought by the UN war crimes tribunal since 1995 to stand trial on charges of genocide and war crimes committed by his troops during the Bosnian war. According to the witnesses Italian SFOR troops backed by four helicopters entered Mladic's house at 1:00 pm. Some 30 mourners, as well as the body of 84-year-old Stana Mladic, were in the house during the search. The Bosnian Serb general is considered the mastermind of the 1995 Srebrenica massacre, Europe's worst atrocity since World War II, and for the three-and-a-half year siege of Sarajevo which claimed another 10,000 Muslim lives. More than 7,000 Muslim men and boys are believed to have been summarily executed in July 1995 when Serb rebel forces overran the eastern enclave of Srebrenica even though it was under the protection of Dutch UN soldiers. For the past several years, Mladic is believed to be living in neighbouring Serbia where war crimes prosecutors claim he is under the protection of the army. But officials in Serbia have recently said that he left the republic a year ago after losing support from his protectors in the former Yugoslav army. Meanwhile, Stana Mladic was laid to rest in Miljevici near Sarajevo in the presence of some 700 people. A wreath of flowers was laid on her grave with a message "From Ratko and family." "Stana had a hard life, but she had something to be 'proud' of," a family member said in a speach at the funeral. "She was a great patriot and she had proved that by raising her son properly," he added. **PHOTO CAPTION*** Former Bosnian Serb general Ratko Mladic. (AFP/File)