Singapore – Pro-Indonesian militias are undergoing training in guerilla warfare with the aim of killing Australian soldiers spearheading a multinational force in East Timor, Singapore's Sunday Times said.

The three-day visit by the Sunday Times to militia training camps near border areas between East and West Timor was the first by foreign or local media, said the report datelined from Atambua in West Timor. Captain Domingos Pereira, a company commander of the notorious Aitarak militia told the paper they hoped to step up cross-border incursions and sporadic attacks against Australian soldiers after a month or two.

"We don't have a chance in a conventional war," Pereira told the paper at the camp near a Catholic cemetery and hidden by trees, where 730 militia men were undergoing physical fitness training.

"But we can make it very painful for them in a guerilla war. The Australians must die for what they have done to my men and their families.

"The Australians are siding openly with our enemies, the Falintil, and are killing our people in East Timor," he said, referring to the pro-independence guerillas.

The Aitarak militias in training are men in their 20s from nearby refugee camps, and carry arms from World War II and expect to get more M-16 rifles used by the Indonesian Special Forces, the report said.

"We don't need sophisticated equipment to rip apart a white man's head. we can do it with our bare hands," said one recruit named Roberto Gama.