Ten bodies exhumed from mass grave in East Timor

Ten bodies exhumed from mass grave in East Timor

DILI, East Timor (AP): UN officials in East Timor Wednesday
found the remains of ten bodies in a burial site they fear may
contain up to 60 victims killed by anti-independence militia
gangs.

UN spokesman Manoel de Almeida e Silva said the bodies were
recovered near the border town of Pasabe, in the isolated enclave
of Oecussi.

He said the mass grave was discovered in December after heavy
rain unearthed several bodies in the shallow grave, but UN
officials were only now starting to exhume them.

De Almeida e Silva said he was unsure of the state of the
bodies or how they were killed but expected to find up to 60
people buried there.

Oecussi, a small enclave separated from the rest of East Timor
and surrounded by Indonesian-controlled West Timor, was only
occupied by peacekeepers in November, nearly two months after
international troops first landed in East Timor.

Pro-Jakarta militias went on a violent rampage through East
Timor following the announcement of the overwhelming vote for
independence in a UN-sponsored plebiscite in August.

The killings and destruction continued unabated until
peacekeepers forced the militias to flee or arrested them.

A total of about 250 bodies have been recovered from various
sites before the most recent discoveries.

Meanwhile, UN officials are planning to ask New Zealand to
send prison wardens to the civil war-ravaged territory to help
rebuild it's jails, De Almeida e Silva said.

East Timor's only detention center is in Dili and is filled to
capacity with 45 people on rape and murder charges - most
stemming from the violence in September.

The UN plans to renovate Dili's main prison which was
destroyed in September by militias.

Currently, 40 UN policemen are acting as wardens at the
detention center.