ADAUN BARANCO shook uncontrollably in the house of the Sisters of the Assumption as the mob outside bayed for his blood.

The 20-year-old student had spent three days hiding in the loft of his home before hunger drove him out into the burning chaos of Dili.

His flight proved to be a near-fatal mistake. Word spread quickly that there was a man from the hated eastern part of East Timor hiding in the predominantly western neighbourhood and more than 100 youths armed with machetes, axes, bows and arrows, and iron bars swarmed to the nuns’ house to demand that he be handed over.

Senhor Baranco was saved from a violent death by a tiny nun. Sister Marosa, who is only 4ft 10in, had fear in her eyes but refused to move. “If you want to kill him you will have to kill me first,” she told the mob, who screamed at her, but hesitated to defy the Church in this devoutly Roman Catholic country. Eventually they got bored and went to smash up a nearby deserted house.

Inside, Senhor Baranco was bathed in sweat and crying uncontrollably with fear. “I am only a student at the polytechnic,” he said. “Why are they doing this? Please save me.”

Four days after Australian troops arrived to restore order in the island nation, the orgy of looting and killing has accelerated along ethnic lines. The Government is powerless, the Army is blamed for much of the trouble, and the police force has disintegrated.

The United Nations evacuated hundreds of its employees yesterday, and tens of thousands of Timorese fled their homes seeking sanctuary at the airport, in embassies and in churches. At least four people were killed, including one man burnt alive as he defended his home and an alleged arsonist who was beaten to death.

Australian soldiers patrolled in armoured cars a few streets from where Senhor Baranco was being protected by the nuns. The few hundred troops in place were unable to control the gangs who were hunting for ethnic victims.

A telephone call alerting the Australian Army to the terrified student received the reply that there were similar situations all over that neighbourhood. He seemed to be better off under the protection of the sisters.

Plumes of smoke above Dili showed where homes and shops were burning across the capital. The few vehicles driving on backstreets had to negotiate burnt skeletons of mopeds or smashed-up and burnt-out buses and cars.

The Times saw dozens of burnt houses on a foray into a western neighbourhood. In areas dominated by people from the east, the homes of westerners were being burnt.

Families had mostly fled to churches or out of the city when the violence started, leaving many Dili neighbourhoods in the hands of thugs.

Resentment has simmered since a mutiny in March by soldiers from the west claiming prejudice at the hands of dominant easterners. Last week it erupted into armed clashes between the factions.

Not much has been seen of the rebels since the Australian soldiers arrived, but east-west enmity has spread through the civilian population, fuelled by grinding poverty in Asia’s poorest country. Male unemployment in Dili is about 60 per cent. Many have clearly enjoyed the hooliganism of the past week as a change from their usual state of boredom. But they have inflicted terrible damage on a city that was still recovering from the destruction of 1999, when the Indonesian military pulled out before independence.

With shops closed after a week of fighting many of the displaced were running short of provisions. A big food warehouse was looted yesterday.

There was also concern that international peacekeepers had failed to restore calm. Vincente Ximenes, a politician formerly with Fretilin, the ruling party, said: “We’re glad to see the Australians, but they are not really doing an effective job here. They are strangers and it’s hard for them to understand who is causing problems. Their job will be much harder this time than it was in 1999.”

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