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| Southeast Asia |
| UN led Timor police to their deaths |
| 2006-06-02 |
| A UN official led unarmed Timorese police on foot through army lines when they were massacred, it has been revealed. THE column of unarmed East Timorese police had walked less than 100m when the shooting began. Two soldiers stepped forward, one of them armed with an M-16 rifle. What happened next was random and mind-numbingly brutal. One soldier pushed a UN policeman aside and raised his rifle to fire four quick bursts of rapid automatic fire into the group of 40 police. Some started running immediately. Others were cowering. The smaller of the two soldiers sprayed four bursts from his M-16 to the left and to the right. His companion meanwhile fired methodical single shots with his M-4 carbine. By the time they had finished, 12 policemen lay dead or dying and 20 more were injured. "I think a couple (of police) had managed to run away. But in front of me was a pile of bodies. It was the worst thing I have ever seen in my life - it was just horrible," a UN policeman told The Weekend Australian. "A few started to move and others, terribly wounded, tried to get up. We got them into the back of the trucks and took them to hospital. The dead we took to the morgue." |
| Posted by:phil_b |
| #4 The officer blamed the senior UN police commander in Dili, Saif Malik from Pakistan, for the carnage. A Pak marching to beat of his own jihad? |
| Posted by: Thinemp Whimble2412 2006-06-02 20:28 |
| #3 Oh, yeah - and what the hell are police doing unarmed? Were they meter maids? |
| Posted by: Barbara Skolaut 2006-06-02 19:50 |
| #2 [The UN] "made every mistake we could" And this is different from normal with the U >:-( |
| Posted by: Barbara Skolaut 2006-06-02 19:49 |
| #1 I know I have mentioned it before, but the East Timor army is made up of former guerillas, mostly from the eastern part of the nation. They have a reputation for a deliberately- cultivated lack of discipline. This was another example of sheer stupidity on the part of the UN. |
| Posted by: Fordesque 2006-06-02 19:41 |