Keith B. Richburg, Dili – Australian troops in East Timor are examining a newly discovered grave site in the Oe-Cussi enclave that may contain the remains of as many as 50 victims of last September's bloody rampage by Indonesian army troops and allied militias, which followed the territory's overwhelming vote to secede from Indonesia.

The head of the intervention force today predicted the final death toll from the violence would likely be in "the lower hundreds," not the thousands as initially feared.

Peacekeepers said that 14 bodies had been found at the Oe-Cussi site, and the painstaking work was continuing today. Exhumations are difficult now because East Timor – Oe-Cussi is on the island's northern coast – is in the midst of the rainy season, and it is feared that crucial evidence could be washed away if there is a rain storm.

The exhumations are crucial to UN investigators and an Indonesian human rights team who are trying to build a case for possible criminal charges against top Indonesian army officials. The former armed forces commander, Gen. Wiranto, who is now a top minister in the cabinet of President Abdurrahman Wahid, has been named as a suspect.

UN and military officials said nearly 200 bodies have been recovered, scattered over 100 locations. Another 200 sites have been identified as possibly containing victims' remains, but they have not yet been exhumed.

In addition, Australian navy divers were dredging a small lake at Maubara town, about seven miles west of Liquica, where victims of an April 6 attack on the town's Roman Catholic church are believed to have been dumped. The divers have recovered the remains of about a dozen people. More than 60 people were slain in the attack.

The list of known and potential grave sites has already given Australian military officials and UN investigators a broad understanding of the scale of the violence that engulfed this territory in the week after nearly 80 percent of its people voted on August 30 to become a new nation. The violence continued until September 20 when the Australian-led multinational force landed.

"Cobbling it all together, we're talking hundreds of cases," Maj. Gen. Peter Cosgrove, the commander of the intervention force, said in an interview. "But not thousands. And it's in the lower hundreds."

Wiranto, speaking before the Indonesian parliament in September, said the number killed in East Timor after the referendum results were announced was "roughly in the nineties," and he accused the foreign media of exaggerating the scale of the violence.

One unanswered question is whether bodies were taken to sea and dumped, as has been repeatedly reported by East Timorese villagers and refugees who reported seeing people loaded onto ships, and the ships returning empty. But like all such accounts, it cannot be independently confirmed. "It's one of those tragic tales where, who can say?" Cosgrove said.

Making a link between the growing number of bodies and the actual involvement, or complicity, of Indonesian army officials in the atrocities will not be easy, officials said. In some cases, witnesses have reported seeing killings, but the bodies have not been recovered. And in those cases where bodies have been exhumed, often there are no witnesses linking the slayings with individuals or with specific army or militia units.

In two cases, Australian military officials and investigators believe they have sufficient evidence to bring charges: a church massacre in the town of Suai, from which 26 bodies were found and a number of witnesses have emerged, and the murder of two nuns and three priest-trainees in Los Palos, where Cosgrove said the culprits have confessed and are in custody.

Cosgrove and Western diplomats said there is also a mountain of evidence and specific suspects linked to the slaying of Dutch journalist Sander Thoenes. Thoenes, who worked for the Financial Times and the Christian Science Monitor, was killed by uniformed soldiers at a roadblock in the Becora section of Dili on the second day of the intervention. However, a Dutch investigator has not been allowed to interview the suspects.