Dili – International investigators excavating a well near Liquisa in East Timor have abandoned the site after unearthing 11 bodies, an Interfet spokesman said Saturday.

Other badly decomposed remains could be seen but the investigation was called off when the site became too dangerous, Interfet officers said.

"The investigation team at the well site have uncovered a total of 11 bodies," said Colonel Mark Kelly. "The danger to the team in terms of a cave in was quite serious. It was a difficult decision, but they made the decision to seal it. Also, the other remains that were evident in there were in a severe state of decomposition."

A senior army chaplain conducted a formal burial service and the well will become a permanent memorial in Liquisa, a coastal town some 35 kilometers west of Dili. Kelly also said the International Force for East Timor (Interfet) had forwarded a request for additional human rights investigators.

Earlier in the week Kelly had said at least 20 bodies had been found in the Liquisa area. Journalists at the scene said there were three separate sites, one of them a creek bed. "There is a suggestion of a number of other bodies in the river bed, but that detail has yet to be confirmed," Kelly said.

In Geneva Friday a UN spokesman said a five-member team tasked with investigating human rights abuses in East Timor hopes to begin its inquiries on the ground during the first couple of weeks of November.

Jose Luis Diaz, a spokesman for the UN Human Rights Commission, said the team, led by Costa Rican jurist and MP Sonia Picado was due to first come to Geneva at the beginning of November for a briefing at the UN agency.

The UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Mary Robinson, announced the composition of the commission last week. Apart from Picado, its members are the former chief of justice of India, A.M. Ahmadi, the deputy chief justice of Papua New Guinea, Mari Kapa, Nigeria's former minister of women's affairs, Judith Sefi Attah, and the former German justice minister, Sabine Leutheusser-Schnarrenberger.

The delegation, which will investigate human rights violations in East Timor since January this year, is due to present its report to UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan before December 31.