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Indonesian aid workers flee violence-racked West Timor

By Reuters in Jakarta

ATAMBUA, Indonesia -- A day after a mob led by pro-Indonesian militias attacked and killed United Nations workers in West Timor, dozens of international aid workers fled the region and Indonesian officials increased their military presence in the area.

U.N. officials said 75 international and Indonesian aid workers left West Timor on a chartered flight Thursday to Bali, a tourist island. Meanwhile, residents said Atambua was quiet, except for groups of militiamen roaming its streets looking for expatriates.

At least three U.N. refugee workers were killed during Wednesday's attack in Atambua, a border town in West Timor, when the mob destroyed United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, or UNHCR, offices.

The brutality of the slayings reportedly placed new pressure on Indonesian  President Abdurrahman Wahid -- already struggling to fix several crises across the sprawling nation -- to crack down on the militias and close refugee camps they have been using as safe havens in West Timor.

Critics have said the militias are supported by rogue sections of Indonesia's military that oppose Wahid's push for democratic reform as well as independence for neighboring East Timor.

Desperate e-mail

One of the slain workers -- Carlos Caceres-Collazo, an American from Puerto Rico -- sent a desperate e-mail to a U.N. security office six hours before the massacre warning that they had heard a mob was en route to destroy the office.

"You should see this office ... Plywood on the windows, staff peering out through the openings in the curtains hastily installed a few minutes ago. We are waiting for the enemy," Caceres wrote.

A Security Council statement said the UNHCR had received advance warning of possible trouble but was assured by the Indonesian security forces that agency staff would be protected.

The rioting mob also burned two U.N. offices. The remaining 54 U.N. workers in Atambua were evacuated to East Timor by helicopter under the cover of two helicopter gunships, U.N. and Indonesian officials reported.

"There were about 5,000 of them going on a rampage. We tried to stop them, but they were totally out of control," an Indonesian military intelligence officer said. "The mob stabbed them to death inside the headquarters and dragged their bodies to the road and set them on fire."

Sadako Ogata, the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees, said all 105 members of her staff would be out of West Timor by Wednesday or Thursday. She identified the dead as Caceres-Collazo, Samson Aregahegn of Ethiopia, and Pero Simundza of Croatia.

In addition to the three dead, three staffers for the U.N. refugee agency were injured, one of them seriously, police in Atambua said. The seriously injured staffer was a Brazilian woman who was hacked by an ax-wielding attacker.

World leaders condemn Indonesian inaction World leaders quickly and harshly castigated Indonesia for not doing more to protect aid workers. Witnesses said Indonesian security forces stood by as the mobs torched the U.N. office and beat the workers.

The unprecedented violence -- one U.N. official said it was one of the worst attacks on U.N. personnel anywhere in the world -- cast a shadow over the U.N. Millennium Summit, which opened Wednesday in New York. More than 150 leaders, including Wahid, stood for a moment of silence in honor of the victims.

Jake Morland, a spokesman for the U.N. High Commissioner in Kupang, the West Timorese capital, said Wednesday's attack may have been precipitated by the recent anniversary of East Timor's historic August 30, 1999, vote for independence and the shooting death on Tuesday of a militia leader opposed to East Timor's independence.

"This is not the first time UNHCR workers have been singled out by these militia groups," Morland said. "(But) this is the worst attack on humanitarian workers so far."

U.S. President Bill Clinton said he was "deeply saddened" to hear of the deaths. "I urge the Indonesian authorities to put a stop to these abuses," Clinton said.

U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan said he had taken up the killings with the Indonesian government "at the highest level."

Militias blamed for East Timor violence The militias and their military sponsors have been blamed by the United Nations and Wahid's government for carrying out the bloody destruction of East Timor a year ago after its people voted to break free of Indonesian rule in a U.N.-supervised referendum.

Indonesia still controls the western part of the island, where the U.N. refugee agency has been delivering aid to an estimated 90,000 refugees who remain in border camps after fleeing the post-referendum violence in East Timor.

Witnesses said some in the crowd accused the United Nations of not paying attention to their plight in the west. Ogata said she was "shocked and profoundly saddened" by the killings.

"These were peaceful, unarmed humanitarians who gave their lives trying to help those who had lost everything in conflict," she added in a statement issued through the Geneva headquarters of the UNHCR.

A resident of Atambua, about 1,300 miles east of Jakarta, Indonesia, said security forces failed to stop the assault. "I heard a lot of shooting, and I saw 20 trucks carrying militias armed with machetes and homemade rifles," he said, adding the mob torched a U.N. car and the contents of the office.

Wahid's office later issued a statement expressing his condolences to the families of the victims and vowing too "find the culprit." The statement said troops and police were being sent to Atambua to help.

First U.N. civilians killed in Timor The victims were the first civilian workers to be killed in Timor. Two peacekeeping soldiers have died in border skirmishes with armed militia infiltrators in East Timor in recent weeks.

About 250,000 people fled East Timor for dozens of border refugee camps in West Timor a year ago after last year's independence ballot. The militia backlash triggered by the east's independence vote continued until international peacekeepers landed in East Timor on September 20, 1999. Since then, nearly 170,000 refugees have returned from West Timor.

The remaining refugees, many of them former Indonesian soldiers, civil servants or militiamen and their families, continue to live in the camps. The U.N. aid operation has repeatedly been forced to shut down after attacks by militia gangs on its staff and buildings in past months.

Timor, an island of Indonesia's East Nusa Tenggara province, was split during the colonial occupation of the Indonesian islands. Dutch spice traders held the western portion of the island, while the Portuguese claimed the east.

Indonesia proclaimed independence from the Netherlands in 1945, but East Timor remained under Portuguese control until 1975, when the European rulers abruptly moved out. Indonesia quickly invaded the territory, prompting a 25-year resistance movement that culminated in last year's referendum.

Refugee camps criticized Indonesia has been under intense pressure to shut down the refugee camps in West Timor since U.N. peacekeepers took control of the situation in East Timor, but the militias have vowed a violent reaction to any forced repatriation.

Militia activity in the area has been on the rise, including several attacks across the border in East Timor in which at least two U.N. peacekeepers died.

The United Nations and other international officials complain that anti-independence militiamen are using the West Timor camps as border incursion bases and safe havens. Under pressure to stop escalating border violence, Indonesia has repeatedly promised to close the camps.

CNN Jakarta Producer Atika Shubert The Associated Press and Reuters contributed to this report to Indonesia Media.