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.