Dili UPDATE 3

Diggers strive to quell violoence
The 3rd Battalion's Delta company came face-to-face with the reality of Dili's descent into chaos yesterday.

It began as a routine patrol, with the 70-strong company fanning out from its base at Dili airport to secure the Australian embassy down the road, where the throngs of refugees escaping the bloodshed had begun to gather.

The plumes of billowing smoke were the first warning, then came a flood of panicked residents down Banana Road in the suburb of Delta-Comoro, where arson attacks and incursions, by forces linked to rebel leader Major Alfredo Reinado and gangs from the west of the country, had terrorised residents for days.

On Banana Road, Delta company encountered a stand-off between about 50 armed rebels and hundreds of furious locals wielding machetes, spears, slingshots and handmade clubs studded with rusty nails.
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Gang violence out of control

More than half of Dili's population has fled spiralling carnage and chaos, with militia gangs defying Australian forces to conduct a rampage of violence across the city.

East Timor's Foreign Minister Jose Ramos Horta has blamed the slow pace of the Australian intervention for the violence and panic.

PORTUGAL'S Foreign Minister Diogo Freitas de Amaral has lashed out at Prime Minister John Howard for criticising the authorities in violence-torn East Timor, which Lisbon ruled for four centuries.