The United Nations said 20 people were killed in fresh fighting in Indonesian West Timor yesterday, two days after the murder of three UN aid workers. The report was denied by the Indonesian military.
The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees agency in the East Timor capital, Dili, said the latest clashes occurred at the Betun refugee camp, which had been taken over by pro-Jakarta East Timorese militias the previous night.
"The 20 casualties have been reported killed . . . we have no information so far about the wounded. We don't know whether they are Indonesian citizens or East Timorese," UNHCR operations manager for East Timor, Mr Bernard Kerblat said.
Betun is a stronghold for the militias which razed East Timor after it voted in August last year to end Indonesia's military rule. The camp is just south of Atambua, where militias killed three UN workers.
An army officer in Atambua denied there had been any new killings but said 11 people had died in a previously unreported massacre by an unidentified mob earlier in the week in the village of Wanidesak, also south of Atambua.
Mr Kerblat said no aid workers were among the latest victims but gave no further information. The UN withdrew more than 240 workers and dependants out of West Timor after Wednesday's deaths. The withdrawal leaves more than 120,000 East Timorese living in refugee camps in West Timor without any outside help and the UNHCR said in Geneva that it may not return because of the dangers.
Indonesian newspapers yesterday condemned the brutality as a national disgrace.
The Jakarta Post demanded the military disband the militias it created in a failed bid to swing last year's East Timor vote.
"The Indonesian military, being the chief sponsor of the militias, must be made to rein in its proxy soldiers, disarm them and arrest their leaders who have perpetrated the campaign of terror," it said in an editorial.
It urged the government to bring the army officers and militias behind last year's bloodshed to trial.
Indonesia's cabinet spent most of the day discussing the issue but came up with nothing new to appease international anger over the militias and the murders.
"Indonesia will take wise, fair and realistic steps to seek a permanent solution," top security minister Mr Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono said afterwards, adding investigations were continuing.
President Abdurrahman Wahid did not attend the meeting. He is in New York for the UN summit, where he faced angry world leaders over Wednesday's murders.
The killings overshadowed the start of the summit, where a minute's silence was held for the three men from the US commonwealth of Puerto Rico, Croatia and Ethiopia.