Pro-Jakarta militias have committed systematic looting, rapes and killings in an East Timorese enclave, a UN official said yesterday. "There has been systematic intimidation, killings, a number of rapes and people being forced over the border," the UN humanitarian affairs officer, Mr Patrick Burgess, said in Dili after visiting the enclave of Oecussi.
Multinational peacekeepers stormed ashore at the coastal enclave inside Indonesian West Timor on Friday. Mr Burgess said Oecussi, which was previously home to some 40,000 people, was devoid of people, vehicles and even animals.
After speaking to about 50 residents who had returned from the surrounding mountains, Mr Burgess heard first-hand accounts of an orgy of violence and terror.
"The militias have been coming into the area every day around seven in morning," he said. "They loot and pillage and, in general, threaten the population. There have been a number of people killed and women raped, and then they go out at five in the afternoon. It is like a commute."
Residents said the militias had removed all cows, pigs and goats, as well as all vehicles with the exception of one motorcycle.
Mr Burgess said nearly all buildings in the enclave had been destroyed, with the church the only structure left intact.
He said the militiamen stopped their actions only on Friday after the seaborne landing by troops of the International Force for East Timor (Interfet).
The Interfet spokesman, Col Mark Kelly, said operations in the enclave "continue to progress well" but did not reveal how much territory remained unsecured. He said Interfet, deployed to combat militia violence following an August 30th vote for independence from Indonesia, was continuing to build up its presence in Oecussi.
Fresh troops arrived there yesterday, but he said no sightings of pro-Indonesian militiamen had been reported since the first day, when 40 were detained.
Civilian and military police also said they had discovered another mass grave holding up to 10 bodies at a site on the outskirts of Dili. Relatives of the victims had led investigators to the site outside the capital.
Reports so far indicated up to 150 bodies would be found but some investigators refuse to rule out a bigger total.
Three returning East Timorese refugees were injured when militiamen hijacked their vehicle in West Timor's main town of Kupang. It occurred on Sunday when the refugees were being taken by bus to a Dili-bound ship carrying some 2,000 East Timorese home from camps in West Timor. "There was no police escort accompanying the convoy and that was the problem," a UN refugees representative said.
The UN Security Council yesterday unanimously approved the UN Transitional Administration in East Timor a force of nearly 11,000 troops and police and thousands of civilian administrators to lead East Timor to independence in two to three years. It will replace Interfet.