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Dozens dead after massive flooding in East and West Timor |
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May 19, 2000 DILI, MAY 18 (AP) - At least 50 people have died in massive floods that washed away refugee camps along the border between East Timor and the Indonesian-controlled western half of the island, U.N. officials said Thursday.
Most of the dead are women and children who were sheltering in several camps for East Timorese refugees located to the west of the heavily guarded border, |
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said Bernard Kerblat, chief of operations of the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees in West Timor. Kerblat discounted earlier reports that up to 125 people may have died, saying 50 bodies had been found so far. He said no casualties were reported from East Timor, although rising waters had caused damage in the cities of Suai, Los Palos and Viqueque.
Jake Morland, a UNHCR spokesman in Kupang, the capital of West Timor, said much of the region has now been cut off after roads and bridges collapsed following three days of heavy downpours.
He said that up to 20,000 people have been seriously affected by the flooding and "are on the move."
He said the worst hit areas were in the south Belu region where about 100,000 people live in a fertile plain along the border. Two U.N. helicopters are evacuating people from the eastern side of the border region and the United Nations has offered Indonesian authorities in West Timor use of the choppers to help reach remote areas cut off by the flooding, officials said.
A ship carrying 300 tons of rice and other emergency relief supplies was leaving Dili on its way to the East Timorese town of Suai, near the southern edge of the border region.
Military engineers belonging to the U.N. force in East Timor were trying to repair roads near Suai, where large areas of farmland had been flooded.
About 250,000 East Timorese fled to West Timor at the height of the violence that engulfed their country last September. At the time, pro-Indonesian militias went on a rampage following a U.N.-sponsored plebiscite in which the overwhelming majority of East Timorese voted to break away from Indonesia.
Although most of the refugees have long since returned, about 100,000 people - mostly with family ties to the militias - remain in the squalid camps near the border.
Indonesia's official Antara news agency reported that floodwaters were up to two meters deep in some areas. It said rescue efforts by Indonesian authorities have been hampered by extensive damage to roads and bridges.
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