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Rash of violent incidents reported

Source
Agence France Presse - July 29, 1999

Dili – The arrest of a gun-toting militia member at a United Nations registration post Thursday was the latest in a series of violent incidents in this Indonesian-ruled territory this week.

"There just seems to be a general upsurge of activity over the last four days," a well-informed local source said.

Indonesian police arrested an Aitarak militia member with a triple-barrelled homemade gun stuffed down his shirt at a school in the west Dili neighbourhood of Bairo Pite, sources said.

At the time of the incident, at about 8.30am, only a few residents had arrived at the school to register for the August 30 vote on East Timor's future being organized by the UN Mission in East Timor (UNAMET).

Another incident blamed on pro-Indonesian militias involved several men armed with homemade guns and machetes near Dili's Mercado Municipal Wednesday afternoon, according to a witness.

The market area has been tense since Monday when one man, whom Aitarak said was one of their members, received a severe stab wound. During the incident, at least two other men who happened to be in the area were slashed by militia swords for no apparent reason, witnesses said. They said militias threw stones and showed a grenade when a UNAMET car arrived in the area.

That night, a witness said, about 30 militiamen with homemade guns loitered across from a police station in the market area.

On Tuesday, Indonesian police recovered a mutilated body in the mountains just south of Liquica, a troubled district west of the capital. The corpse, which has not been identified, had almost been decapitated and both arms were nearly severed, sources said.

Another body turned up the same day near the southern East Timor town of Suai. A source said it appeared to have been there for two or three days.

Also Tuesday in the Suai region, a man wearing a grenade loitered outside a voter registration centre, the source said.

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