Barry Porter, Auckland – Resistance leader and Nobel peace laureate Jose Ramos Horta said yesterday he had received reports that pro-Jakarta forces had begun attacking East Timor hillsides where unarmed civilians had taken refuge.

He warned that tens of thousands of women, children and the elderly would die over the next few days. "If they do not die of slaughter, they will die of starvation," said Mr Ramos Horta, claiming the hills could not cope with such an influx.

He said he had received witness accounts of four truckloads of civilians being blown up on the outskirts of Dili. Bodies were being dumped into the sea and there had been "thousands" of deaths in the Dili area alone over the past few days, he claimed. "Hundreds of others are being killed elsewhere," he said.

Mr Ramos Horta described it as a "preordained, predetermined" campaign of violence by Indonesian military factions opposed to the East Timorese people's recent overwhelming vote for independence.

Given that countries such as the United States, Australia, Britain and Canada had sold the Indonesians weapons and provided military training, Mr Ramos Horta said they could shoulder some of the blame.

He also said that if the UN Security Council, New Zealand, Australia and other countries insisted an invitation had to come from Jakarta before intervention, "they will be accomplices in this genocide".

Mr Ramos Horta said he did not understand why world leaders could intervene to halt mass deportation and killings in Kosovo without seeking Serbia's consent but needed an invitation from Jakarta when no UN members other than Australia officially recognised Indonesia's sovereignty over East Timor.

In particular, Mr Ramos Horta called on China to fulfil its UN Security Council obligations – "if not for the East Timorese, for their own people", he said, referring to the killing and rape of ethnic Chinese in Indonesia last year.