Mob violence continued to rampage through the capital of East Timor today, evading foreign peacekeeping troops and torching homes and vehicles.
Witnesses saw one gang of about 20 youths chase a man into a half-built house before bludgeoning him to death in the doorway with rocks and clubs. "He was setting fires," said one of the ringleaders, seemingly the oldest at around 20.
As night fell, smoke was still billowing above several neighborhoods in Dili as the gangs, which identify with army factions from either the east or west of the country, marked out their territories with makeshift barricades and roadblocks and took revenge on rivals.
The violence was sparked by a dispute over the sacking of army staff and has since turned into ethnic violence.
Antonio Caleres Junior, director of the city's main hospital, said 20 people had died there in the last week - 14 from gun shot wounds and six from burn injuries.
He was unaware of casualties that his hospital had not treated. Australian troops, part of a 2,000-plus multinational deployment following the East Timor government's appeal for help, stepped up patrols in the capital but still appeared to hold back from directly engaging the rampaging gangs.
They were backed by small patrols of Malaysian and New Zealand troops. "Why aren't the Australians doing anything?" asked one youth, manning a barricade on the main road leading from the airport.
"It's a trickier operation than some people think," Australian Prime Minister John Howard told the Australian Broadcasting Corporation today.
"Nobody should assume that it's just a simple walk-in-the-park military operation - it's quite challenging." The commander of the Australian troops said soldiers were concentrating on disarming factions of the military and gangs.
East Timor is one of the world's poorest nations and massive unemployment has seen the formation of dozens of gangs whose sole aims seem to be to practise martial arts and fight turf wars - regardless of the political situation. But some residents say the rebellion has turned into a protest against the government which they accuse of failing to deliver any economic or social development since Timor became an independent state in 2002.
An election is scheduled for early next year, but some diplomats say the government cannot last that long. A Portuguese colony for centuries, the country was annexed by Indonesia in 1976 in a move the United Nations condemned and much of the population resisted.