Soldiers Kill 9 In East Timor

Soldiers fired on unarmed police in East Timor's capital, killing nine and wounding 27, as international troops struggled to end fighting that has threatened to plunge the world's youngest country back into full-scale civil war.

Members of the tiny nation's 800-member army suspected the policemen of allying themselves with a band of about 600 dismissed soldiers who have engaged in days of deadly clashes with the army in Dili.

An hour-long attack on the national police headquarters Thursday ended only after U.N. police and military advisers negotiated a cease-fire with the Timorese soldiers under which the police were to surrender their weapons and leave the building.

"As the unarmed police were being escorted out, army soldiers opened fire on them, killing nine and wounding 27 others, including two U.N. police advisers," U.N. spokesman Stephane Dujarric said in New York.

The unrest in East Timor is the most serious threat to the desperately poor country since it won independence from Indonesia in 1999, and the attack on policemen illustrates the dangers facing peacekeepers from Australia, New Zealand, Portugal and Malaysia, the first of whom arrived Thursday.

The sound of heavy machine-gun fire, mortar and small arms was heard from the hills surrounding Dili on Friday and machete-weilding youths were seen stopping a bus on the city's outskirts, though they allowed it to pass unharmed.