The UN said today that it was starting an airlift of shelter and other aid to East Timor, where an estimated 100,000 people have been uprooted by violence and looting.
The UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) is also sending an emergency team of ten to 12 experts this weekend to help set up camps for the displaced in the tiny nation.
UNHCR's relief operation follows nearly ten days of arson and looting by gangs loosely allied to factions in the army and police force of East Timor, which became independent of Indonesia in 2002.
Family tents, blankets, plastic sheeting, jerry cans and other basic non-food items for up to 30,000 displaced people were being sent from its stockpiles in Amman, Jordan, a UNHCR spokesman said.
An estimated 100,000 people are displaced in East Timor, about 65,000 of them living in 30 squalid encampments in the capital of Dili, while a further 35,000 people have fled to the countryside.
The Geneva-based agency had phased out of East Timor over the past year after helping repatriate some 220,000 refugees who fled violence linked to the August 1999 independence referendum.