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.