Children killed in grenade blast in troubled East Timor
Children killed in grenade blast in troubled East Timor
DILI, East Timor (JP): Three children were killed and another
was badly injured when they stumbled on a live hand grenade while
playing in Becora village in East Dili on Monday.
Police said two of the children were killed instantly and one
boy later died at a Dili clinic.
"The grenade was lying behind the bushes where the children
were playing. They could not have known it was an explosive," Lt.
Col. M. Safei, a local police spokesman, said.
Safei said the bodies of Joao da Costa, 13, and 5-year-old
Jose dos Reis were brought to their respective families by police
who found the bodies after the blast rocked a hilly area in
Becora.
He said another boy, Maulao, 7, was badly injured and taken to
a hospital.
Residents said the area where the boys were playing was used
as a base by pro-Jakarta militias during attacks on the
proindependence movement last month.
Tension between pro and anti-Indonesian groups has escalated
since Jakarta said in January it would let East Timor establish
an independent nation if its people rejected an autonomy offer.
Meanwhile, the Jakarta office of the International Committee
of the Red Cross (ICRC) expressed concern on Monday that its
medical staff were not permitted by the Ministry of Health to
work at Dili General Hospital.
"Officials in the ministry have been saying that military
doctors, including military surgeons, have been dispatched to
East Timor, and they added that the presence of foreign medical
staff was still not necessary," ICRC spokesman Sri W. Endah told
The Jakarta Post.
She said the ICRC team in East Timor comprised surgeon Peter
Riddell, an anesthetist, Haydn Perndt and an operating theater
nurse, Judith Oliver.
Endah said the team secured permission from the Minister of
Foreign Affairs on May 19 to work in Dili, but had not managed to
resolve the problem with Ministry of Health officials.
In Dili, David Wimhurst, spokesman for the United Nations
Assistance Mission in East Timor (UNAMET) named on Monday an
Australian Federal Police officer, Alan Mills, as head of the
272-strong contingent of U.N. civilian police scheduled to start
arriving in East Timor next week.
UNAMET has begun broadcasting radio programs to explain the
purpose of its mission in East Timor and has taken over the back
page of the local Suara Timor Timur (Voice of East Timor)
newspaper to disseminate information about the referendum.
All broadcasts and published information are translated in
four languages -- English, Portuguese, Indonesian and the local
Tetun dialect.(33/byg)