Anti-independence militiamen occupied towns and villages across East Timor yesterday, and police evacuated dozens of UN staff workers from one of the many areas that were under siege by the marauding gangs.
Violence in the area is expected to escalate over the weekend as the results of a UN-supervised independence ballot are to be released today. Vote-counting began yesterday.
"They [the militias] are burning everything. They don't respect anything. They are out of control. They are crazy," said one of the 54 UN workers who returned to Dili, the territorial capital, from the town of Maliana, southwest of the capital. He spoke on condition of anonymity, saying he feared reprisals.
PHOTO: AFP
Forty of the evacuated staffers were foreigners acting as liaison officers or civilian police. The rest were East Timorese.
A new wave of violence also swept across parts of Dili.
Indonesian armed forces chief Wiranto said Foreign Minister Ali Alatas had told him the ballot result would be announced Saturday, the official Antara news agency reported.
The result is expected to show overwhelming support for independence, but pro-Jakarta militiamen have been waging a campaign of terror against East Timorese who want to sever links with Indonesia.
Wiranto said yesterday in Jakarta he was sending 1,400 more soldiers to the violence-wracked region. The police said they were sending an additional 400 specially trained officers today and tomorrow.
The UN mission said it was "defenseless" in face of the deteriorating security situation and the inability of Indonesian defense forces to restore law and order.
The UN High Commission on Refugees said yesterday they were preparing for an emergency situation and estimated that between 50,000 and 100,000 people might flee the former Portuguese colony.
UN Human Rights Commissioner Mary Robinson said yesterday that a large UN military force might be needed to protect civilians and UN staff in the Indonesian-controlled territory.
"A substantial UN peacekeeping force might be needed to protect Timorese civilians and UN staff, given the inability of Indonesian security forces to control the situation," she said.
The UNHCR estimates that between 50,000 and 55,000 people have already been displaced in the territory in the past few months, including 30,000 who have fled to Dili.
Some 12,000 East Timorese have already gone to West Timor in Indonesia.
UN spokesman David Wimhurst said that at least four locally-hired UN staff members have been killed and six gone missing since Monday's referendum on whether the half-island territory should break away from Indonesia.
Human rights groups and witnesses said that more than a dozen East Timorese residents have died in the fighting this week, but no official civilian death toll was available.
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