Dili – Unidentified gunmen killed one person and seriously injured two pregnant women in an attack Monday on a minibus in East Timor, officials said.

The group fled after the attack at 12:45 pm near the village of Aidabaleten in Maliana district, said Deputy Defence and Security Minister Roque Rodrigues. He gave no further details.

Maliana is on the border with Indonesian West Timor, where many pro-Jakarta militiamen have sheltered since fleeing East Timor in September 1999.

A security source said the 10-strong group first fired on a truck, but the driver escaped. The attackers then stopped a minibus, boarded and started firing, killing one and injuring several others, at least three severely.

United Nations peacekeeping troops deployed a quick reaction force to search for the attackers. Checkpoints were set up and a helicopter called in. UN police and East Timorese police also rushed to the scene.

About 12-15 attackers killed five people in two villages January 4, some 35 kilometres from the border with West Timor.

Brigadier General Justin Kelly, deputy commander of the UN peacekeeping force in East Timor, told AFP last week that anti-independence militiamen had launched a "terrorist strategy" to undermine East Timor's government before the planned UN withdrawal from the country next year.

Kelly said last month's killing of the five former pro-independence campaigners pointed to a new militia threat from West Timor.

A group of men recently arrested in Liquica claimed they were among several groups, including those responsible for the killings in January, that had been sent over the border from West Timor in December, Kelly said.

They named their sponsor as Master Sergeant Tome Diogo, an East Timorese working for the Indonesian military in the border town of Atambua. The men said they were among some 300 trained for a guerrilla campaign against former pro-independence activists and local chieftains.

Kelly said he thought it was more likely Diogo was working for other East Timorese rather than the Indonesian army. East Timorese leaders have also said they do not believe Jakarta had any hand in the incursions.