EAST TIMOR:The prime minister of East Timor declared a 48-hour state of emergency yesterday after a co-ordinated attempt to assassinate him and the president by renegade troops.
Prime minister Xanana Gusmao escaped what he described as a failed "coup attempt" unharmed. But president Jose Ramos-Horta was in a critical condition after being shot when the rebels fired on his official residence around dawn.
The 58-year-old Nobel peace prizewinner was flown by air ambulance to Darwin in neighbouring Australia for further treatment after undergoing initial surgery at the international military base in the capital, Dili. Last night he was said to be "out of danger" after a bullet was removed from his lung, though doctors said the next 48 hours would be critical.
The Australian prime minister, Kevin Rudd, decided to send another 150 troops to beef up the 800-strong force of peacekeepers stationed in the impoverished southeast Asian nation since it was convulsed by violence in 2006 that left 37 dead and 150,000 homeless. Mr Gusmao (61) held an emergency cabinet meeting after Mr Ramos-Horta was hit during a gun battle at his home on the outskirts of Dili that left fugitive rebel leader Maj Alfredo Reinado and one of his men dead.
Maj Reinado was wanted in connection with the 2006 killings after he led renegade security forces following their sacking. Most of the rebels later put down their guns, but he and a handful of comrades hid in East Timor's hills last November.
Gunmen in two cars attacked the president's home at about 7am, when he was probably coming back from his daily jog on the nearby beach. He was wounded twice, one bullet hitting him in the back and passing through his stomach.
Isabelle Abric, head of public information for the UN peace-keeping mission, lives close by and heard the initial burst of four or five shots, before the president's bodyguards fired back, killing two attackers and sending the others fleeing. "I didn't pay much attention to it at first," she said. "I thought it might have been someone shooting in the air. Then I saw the ambulance arrive and the International Stabilisation Force troops and UN police rushed to the residence."
About an hour later Mr Gusmao's convoy was fired on by other attackers on a mountain road as he travelled from his house in the hills to his Dili office. No one was hurt.