Dili – East Timorese officials blamed anti-independence militias Tuesday for an attack that killed two people, injured four and heightened security fears in the world's newest nation.
A man aged 29 was killed on the spot in Monday's attack in the Maliana district bordering Indonesian West Timor. A 64-year-old man died in hospital Tuesday, his relatives said.
The killing came just six weeks after attackers killed five people including independence supporters in the west of the country.
Last month's killings were blamed on West Timor-based anti-independence militiamen seeking to destabilise the country.
UN and East Timorese officials have said they do not believe the Indonesian government or military chiefs are behind the infiltrations.
Ricardo Ribeiro, national security adviser to Prime Minister Mari Alkatiri, said it appeared militiamen may also have been involved in Monday's attack. "There are indications because the weapons that they were using were SKS [automatic rifles often used by the militias]," he told AFP.
East Timor deputy police chief, Julio Hornai, agreed. "Information we obtained from witnesses indicates that the attack was carried out by militia. Some of the witnesses said they knew the attackers," Hornai said.
Ribeiro said militia leaders in West Timor made a joint decision late last year to destabilise East Timor before the United Nations presence ends in 2004. He said the man who organised the infiltrators, army Master Sergeant Tome Diogo, is now thought to be in Dili and authorities are searching for him.
"In the end of 2002 there was a meeting that was made by a number of militia leaders in Atambua to go into East Timor," Ribeiro said, referring to the main West Timor border town. They have entered illegally and they are everywhere in the west. They can easily come in and out."
Another movement calling itself Colimau 2000, apparently led by disgruntled former resistance fighters, has at the same time sprung up in border regions. One of the militiamen's methods, Ribeiro said, appeared to be to infiltrate this movement.
Many UN figures have been concerned about the possibility of disgruntled militia and disaffected resistance veterans teaming up against the government of the poverty-stricken nascent state.
Brigadier General Justin Kelly, deputy commander of the UN peacekeeping force, said it was too early to say whether Monday's attackers were ex-militiamen. He said 250 to 300 UN troops were securing the area of the attack.
Last week Kelly said anti-independence militiamen had launched a "terrorist strategy" to undermine the government before the planned UN withdrawal.
The Indonesian military commander overseeing West Timor promised tighter security along the border. East Nusa Tenggara provincial military chief Colonel Muswarno Musanip, quoted by the Jakarta Post, said the military would not allow West Timor to become a base for militia activities.
Pro-Jakarta militias, armed and organised by the Indonesian military, launched a brutal campaign of intimidation before a UN-organised independence vote in East Timor in August 1999 and a revenge campaign afterwards.
An estimated 1,000 people were killed before Australian peacekeeping troops moved in and the militiamen fled across the border. East Timor finally achieved independence last May.