At least 20 bodies were found in three places in the coastal town of Liquisa in East Timor, 35 km west of the capital, Dili, yesterday. This is the largest number of bodies yet uncovered in a small area by multinational forces, a senior Interfet officer said.
Reporters saw the three separate sites, one on a beach, one in a dry creek bed and one in a house. All sites were within a one km radius, and by the time journalists arrived were surrounded by crime scene tape, beyond which UN personnel barred them from going.
The beach site appeared to be a grave just off the shore in scrubland. In the creek bed, a current had cut a cave into the embankment, and the bodies appeared to have been stuffed into the cave and the embankment collapsed on top of it, the photographer said.
An official outside the house said the body of a 19-year-old girl was found inside. The body had been forced into a box, and almost certainly dismembered.
Capt Jeremy Gillman-Wells, a military liaison officer for Liquisa, said the bodies would be exhumed today and if identified, returned to their next of kin.
He said they had eye-witness accounts of the killings, which indicated some of the victims may have come from Dili.
An Interfet spokesman in Dili, Col Mark Kelly, said earlier that local residents had alerted the International Force for East Timor (Interfet) to the discovery late yesterday, and soldiers went into the area early yesterday.
"We are looking at approximately 20 bodies, at least at this time. . . as for any other gruesome details, I haven't been passed them," Col Kelly said.
There were also unconfirmed reports that nine bodies had been washed up on the beach near the East Timorese border town of Batugade overnight.
Liquisa was the scene of a massacre in April - months before the territory's vote for independence - when pro-Jakarta militiamen hacked to death at least 21 refugees in a churchyard.
Thousands of starving, barefoot refugees, mostly women and children, poured over the border from West Timor yesterday after the militia relaxed their grip on camps in Atambua, aid officials said.
Three people died of exhaustion on the three-hour trek, one a seven-month-old baby girl, another a 57-year-old man and the third was an old woman.