Curfew imposed in Dili after riots and looting

Curfew imposed in Dili after riots and looting

Agencies, Dili

Hundreds of UN troops patrolled the streets of the East Timor capital Dili on Wednesday after riots and looting in which at least one person died and several buildings including the prime minister's house were torched.

"A curfew was imposed at 1900 (5:00 p.m. Jakarta time) and is being widely observed by the population," Brig. Gen. Justin Kelly, deputy commander of the UN peacekeeping force, told AFP.

He said about 700 international peacekeepers and 200 international and East Timorese police were enforcing the curfew. Soldiers carried semi-automatic rifles.

The violence was the worst since independence on May 20 and revived traumatic memories of the mayhem surrounding the territory's 1999 breakaway from Indonesia.

In a statement Wednesday evening, President Xanana Gusmao said Dili was calm and blamed "forces with ulterior motives" for trying to take advantage of student demonstrations.

At least 30 people have been arrested and more will be detained, said Jose Guterres, chief of staff to Prime Minister Mari Alkatiri.

A supermarket was gutted and the Resende hotel and some other buildings were torched in addition to Alkatiri's residence, Guterres told AFP.

"There was looting of some shops in the central business district," Kelly said.

United Nations and other officials said the trouble began at parliament.

Shots were fired and one student was killed after a large crowd demanding the release of an arrested student went on the rampage there.

Kelly confirmed one death. He said at least six others were wounded by gunfire or rocks while at least five had suffered other injuries.

But according to Reuters, which quoted a witness, five people were killed in clashes with police.

"At least five were killed and I saw another six people in a minivan being taken to the hospital with really bad injuries," said the witness, a journalist, adding that it was police who opened fire.

Gusmao, a handkerchief over his mouth to stop the acrid fumes of tear gas, met protesters to try to halt the violence.

Guterres denied a state of emergency had been declared, contrary to an earlier statement from Internal Affairs Minister Rogerio Lobato.

"Now it seems that everything is calming down a little bit," Alvaro Antunes, a Portuguese resident of Dili, said from his home near the airport shortly after the curfew took effect.

Some government officials said they suspected a radical group known as RDTL was behind the student-led unrest.

"This is an orchestrated maneuver to topple the government," Lobato told AFP.

He blamed people linked to RDTL, a hardline nationalist group which has been tied to previous unrest and was not part of the mainstream independence movement during Indonesian occupation.

Guterres also said RDTL was suspected of involvement in the unrest by about 1,000 people including students.

"You had a lot of actions that seemed coordinated," Antunes said. "They knew exactly what to destroy."

Kristio Wahyono, the head of the Indonesian representative office in Dili, said a mosque and dozens of houses and shops were among the buildings set on fire. Vehicles were also torched.

The UN Mission in Support of East Timor (UNMISET) said a crowd of students arrived at parliament on Wednesday morning to discuss unrest which had erupted on Tuesday after a student was arrested.

Some became agitated because the house was not yet sitting and one legislator was hit on the head with a stone.

"The situation then deteriorated and resulted in gunshot injuries to two students and significant material damage to both the parliament and (the government's) principal administrative building," UNMISET said in a statement.

One of the students died, the statement said.

Six shots had been fired during the melee, an AFP reporter said, but the source of the gunfire was unclear.

"Some warning shots were fired by East Timor police and there are unconfirmed rumors of shooting from the crowd," said Kelly earlier.

The crowd moved around the corner and attacked the Hello Mister supermarket, one of the first foreign businesses to open in Dili after the 1999 violence surrounding the vote to separate from Indonesia.