Lindsay Murdoch Dili and Craig Skehan Kupang – Piles of bodies have been seen stacked in cells at the police headquarters in Dili, while East Timorese forced to flee into Indonesian West Timor have arrived with accounts of murder and continuing intimidation by Indonesian militias.

The bodies were seen on Wednesday by Mrs Ina Bradridge, the Timorese wife of an Australian aid worker, Mr Isa Bradridge, when the couple were taken to the police compound during this week's violence.

Mr Bradridge, of Ballina in New South Wales, said his wife spotted the bodies as she walked the corridors of the police station looking for a toilet. They were in a building she said was once used as a torture cell for political prisoners.

"My wife told me she saw bodies stacked high, thousands of them," Mr Bradridge said. "She smelt the bodies," he said. "I know it is hard to believe, but it is absolutely true. My wife saw arms and legs and dripping blood."

Across the border in West Timor, people forced to flee their homeland have arrived in Kupang with accounts of murder and Indonesian militia violence, which continued even when they had left East Timor.

The refugees, some of whom say they were forcibly expelled, have told aid workers of their ordeal, amid reports that militia using stolen United Nations vehicles are "hunting" for independence supporters.

The head of Indonesia's National Human Rights Commission, Mr Marzuki Darusman, warned today of a "state of lawlessness" in West Timor.

A spokesman for the Catholic aid agency Caritas said in Sydney that the treatment of those forced from East Timor "would have to rank among the crimes of the century". Mr John Scott-Murphy told a Senate inquiry that those forced across the border were being held hostage.

"These people should be viewed as hostages rather than as refugees and it's entirely possible that is the objective in trucking them across the border," Mr Scott-Murphy said.

An estimated 8000 refugees have arrived in Kupang on evacuation flights and on ships, but tens of thousands more have made the dangerous journey into West Timor by road.

Survivors say militia gangs have intercepted groups of refugees and singled out those believed to be independence activists. Most refugees now in West Timor have been herded into camps that are tightly controlled by militia and Indonesian police and soldiers.

One distraught man told how militiamen slaughtered defenceless refugees in an East Timor Catholic church compound.

Another watched terrified at the West Timor port of Atapupu as militia used machetes to kill men alleged to be independence supporters. The victims were among people who arrived by ship from Dili.

"Other men had their hands tied and they were put on trucks and taken away," said a source who is collecting accounts for presentation to the international community. "Militia are checking all the people that are coming in there."

In another incident, four people accused of being pro-independence activists were stabbed to death while trying to board a ship.

People arriving in Kupang who do not have local family or friends are taken to camps on the edge of the town by Indonesian authorities, the biggest of which is Noelbaki. Foreign media trying to talk to refugees at the camp have been attacked by militia.

Members of a United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) team left West Timor after they were assaulted and their vehicle destroyed at the camp.

Underground support groups are being established to get people in danger to safe houses or to other parts of Indonesia.

"Many people who are pro-independence are pretending to be pro-autonomy," one source said. "It is like when Jews were trying to travel across occupied Europe." Aid officials expect the number of refugees in West Timor to reach 100,000 in coming days.

One aid worker who is on the run said there are reports of killings in Balibo, west of Dili. "The big danger now is to refugees in West Timor because in many areas the militia are in control," he said. "And the militia are still being being directed by the Indonesian military."

Humanitarian workers say large numbers of refugees are emotionally shattered because they believed the UN team in East Timor would protect them. They talk of the narrow roads from the east being "badlands" where roadblocks instill renewed terror.

The circumstances of people being put on trucks and bused to West Timor differ. Aid workers say some are the families of pro-Indonesia activists and militia members. In other cases, independence supporters are being expelled for fear they will testify on the participation of Indonesian police and military in acts of violence.

And aid workers talk of a third category. "Some people are willing to get on trucks because their villages are burning around them and many people are dead," one source said. "It is matter of degrees of bad."