I was so mixed up. I was thinking of Sri Lanka's Tamil Tiger rebels. I hope I have the link to the right 3rd world he**hole.
Posted on 05/26/2006 9:35:03 PM PDT by BlackVeil
A MOTHER and and her five children were burned to death when a mob torched their Dili home.
The family died in one of seven houses torched in the suburb of Delta-Comoro about one kilometre from the airport yesterday, just hours before the first Australian troops touched down.
AAP today saw the charred remains.
Inside the house of horror, the mother's blackened body was found clutching that of her four-year-old daughter in a bathroom.
Four bodies of her other children, some of them adolescents, were found in other rooms.
Details of the slaughter emerged as conflict continued to affect sections of Dili, with the UN headquarters in the capital's centre temporarily under siege today.
Intense shooting and grenade blasts were reported outside the UN walls despite the presence of Australian troops at the airport.
Late today, with shooting apparently over, two Australian army armoured personnel carriers were parked outside the UN compound's gates in a V-formation.
The armoured presence a compound followed a day in which shooting was reported near the president's hilltop official residence while his offices were evacuated in the centre of the capital.
It was unclear which of Timor's warring armed factions were responsible.
The UN mission is next door to Timor's police headquarters, where yesterday 12 unarmed officers were massacred and two UN workers and others were wounded when Timorese army personnel opened fire.
Jill Jolliffe, who is reporting for AAP, said she heard a series of long bursts of automatic weapons fire this morning not far from the UN building.
"We could hear shooting a few blocks away from where we were. The bursts lasted for about five minutes," Jolliffe said.
In New Zealand, Prime Minister Helen Clark said she had information that the UN compound had been surrounded by unknown military forces and some staff evacuated by helicopter.
"So that's an indication of the level of breakdown in Timor at the moment," she said on Radio New Zealand.
"It's hard to tell anymore how many people would still be said to be in a military loyal to the government and how many are operating under their own self-proclaimed mandate," Clark said.
The broadcaster said a UN spokesman at the barracks had reported a sighting of two masked men inside the facility.
AAP reporter Rob Taylor said there was firing and what seemed to be grenade blasts within 100 to 150 metres of the presidential residence.
President Xanana Gusmao, however, was staying at a retreat further up in nearby mountains where he is recuperating from chronic back pain.
The area near the residence is a stronghold of some renegade elements within East Timor's fractured military.
Groups of rebels set up roadblocks but gave friendly waves to AAP's car as it drove through.
Cause/motivation of violence? Unaddressed in the story.
Yes, every story from Timor is very vague as to the "why." There are reports of ethnic divisions - the violent gangs come from the Western part of the Territory, and the governing ministers from the East.
Some Catholic clerics said, in Australia this week, that the real reason for all this is poverty and unemployment.
I was so mixed up. I was thinking of Sri Lanka's Tamil Tiger rebels. I hope I have the link to the right 3rd world he**hole.
Thank you.
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