Aussies in heroic rescue
Published: May 27, 2006
AUSTRALIAN troops shepherded hundreds of panicked locals to safety through alleys on their dangerous mercy mission in Dili yesterday.
The troops rescued terrified families from a rampage by rival armed civilian gangs.
A squad of 10 heavily armed troops entered a neighbourhood in central Dili near the United Nations compound on foot after shooting broke out about 500m away.
Locals said the fighting was between the country’s rival ethnic eastern Lorosae and western Loromonu factions. The civilian gangs unleashed their anger on one another with automatic weapons and spears.
Amid at least three burning houses and sporadic shooting, the Australians moved into a narrow alley filled with flames and black smoke.
Spread out and taking cover wherever they could, they searched house to house, peering over fences as the gunfire echoed.
They gathered a small group of terrified women and children and one man who was wounded in the hip with a barbed arrow.
“Get back, get back now. I’m telling you to back away,” the soldiers screamed at one menacing group of local young men, some of whom wore scarves over their faces.
They had their weapons half-raised and the squad commander held his arm out in warning as explosions thumped and gunfire rattled over an exposed roadway.
The wounded man, Horacio Fernandez, had wrapped a shirt over a gaping wound in his left hip. It was soaked with blood.
“I must go back, I want them to go back, because my wife and two children are back in there, inside the house,” he said repeatedly. “I don’t care if I die. Just save my family.”
He said they had been huddled inside their burning house and he was hit by the spear when they emerged.
“Shut up. Just tell them all to shut up,” a tense soldier replied as he scoured the surrounding lanes with his assault rifle.
The squad commander rushed over to look at Mr Fernandez.
Minutes later the patrol emerged back at the UN building, where anxious mates were on guard and standing near the open gate.
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