| Subject: AFP: Militia in
ambush attack behind Timor atrocities Militia in ambush attack behind Timor atrocities
CASSA, East Timor, Oct 7 (AFP) - The armed men involved in
a fatal clash with international peacekeepers in East Timor were from a feared militia
which has committed a series of atrocities, witnesses said Thursday.
Residents of this mountain village said the attack on
Wednesday had been carried out by members of the Mahidi (Live or Die for Integration)
militia, whose leader Cancio Carvalho is based here.
Villagers said the militia had tied one man to a
steel-framed chair with wire and burned him alive. The chair, wire and the charred remains
of the man were visible Thursday outside Carvalho's headquarters.
"They tied him to that and set him alight after
stabbing him in front of the whole town in the soccer field," said Armandio de Jesus,
a former UN employee.
The Mahidi, which has threatened to wage guerrilla war to
prevent East Timor severing its ties to Indonesia, also raided the nearby village of
Hatohudo on Sunday, beheading one woman and killing five others, residents said.
"There was a lot of shooting. They came in trucks. We
all ran," said Aniceto Xavier, 31. "The militia cut the head off the lady and
put her head on an oil drum in the middle of the road."
Xavier said the militia had told the people they should go
to Atambua, across the border in West Timor, or they would be killed.
The Mahidi have virtually destroyed Cassa -- a mountain
town about 70 kilometers (45 miles) from the border with West Timor -- forcibly removing
many of its residents.
Two militiamen were killed on Wednesday when they ambushed
an Australian patrol near the town of Suai. Two Australian soldiers were injured.
Residents of Cassa said about 500 people had been loaded
onto a convoy of militia trucks and stolen United Nations vehicles and driven across the
border.
Only about 100 people remained in the town, many of them
women and children.
They survived by running off into the forest when the
militia trucks rumbled in. Fearing the militia will return, they have now armed themselves
with spears and bows and arrows.
"The militia told the people here that they would drop
their families in Atambua and they would return to kill those who stayed," said de
Jesus, who was the presiding UN electoral official for the August 30 ballot, in which East
Timorese voted overwhelmingly for independence.
De Jesus, who said he would have been a prime target for
the militia, had hidden in the forest and emerged after the militia had left.
pool-am/kw/pch
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