Australian troops moved into the sensitive border region of East Timor yesterday in an effort to halt militia violence and get aid to starving refugees.
The move signalled a new urgency by the multinational forces' leaders to secure rural areas and deliver food and medicine before the wet season begins this month.
In the largest manoeuvre since the international forces arrived 12 days ago, 700 troops landed in the towns of Batugade and Balibo by helicopter, naval landing craft and armoured vehicles.
Major Mark Tanzer, of the International Force for East Timor (Interfet), said the operation would not involve crossing the frontier with Indonesian West Timor. Militias were reported to be massing along the border, which is less than a mile from Batugade. "Our mandate is for East Timor and East Timor only," he said.
The troops were met by 40 locals who were scavenging for food. UN surveillance flights revealed both towns had been extensively burned and damaged in the past week and are largely uninhabited.
On the other side of the territory, members of a 20-strong British Gurkha force fired the first shots of the Interfet operation as they freed more than 2,000 people being held by militias in what a local Catholic priest called "perverse ethnic cleansing".
Major Tim Warrington of the Royal Gurkha Rifles said he had just helped to secure the town on Thursday when the priest told him about the refugees. They had been imprisoned on a wharf in the port of Com to await possible deportation to another Indonesian island. The church and the local Falintil pro-independence commander reported that there were anything between six and 120 armed militiamen at the quay.
Maj Warrington said he had authorised two of his troops to fire warning shots after seeing the fighters fleeing up the hill, but the men, who are suspected of involvement in a massacre of nuns and church workers, escaped into the jungle. The refugees were returned to the remains of their homes in Los Palos.
The United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, Mrs Mary Robinson, expects to name five experts next week to form the UN panel charged with gathering evidence on major violations in East Timor, her spokesman said in Geneva yesterday. The panel will be assisted by field experts, including forensic experts, who are expected to go to Timor next week, he added.