Police were last night hunting nearly 60 prisoners who escaped in a mass jailbreak yesterday.

The fugitives include scores of people arrested in the recent violence that wracked East Timor as well as militiamen who opposed the country's break from Indonesian rule in 1999.

Foreign peacekeepers deployed a helicopter to hunt down the escaped convicts, though by nightfall there were no reports any had been arrested, witnesses said.

A prison warden blamed the breakout on a shortage of guards, saying many never returned to their posts after the violence in the capital three months ago, which killed 30 people and sent 150,000 others fleeing.

Warden Carlos Sarmento said 57 inmates fled the Becora Penitentiary in Dili after breaking down several walls in the east wing.

Among them were dozens of people arrested by international peacekeepers for illegal weapons possession linked to the May violence, as well as Major Alfredo Reinado, a former military police chief accused of leading a group of rebel soldiers in the clashes, said Sarmento.

He said several pro-Jakarta militiamen convicted in the bloody riots that followed East Timor's independence vote in 1999 were also among the escaped convicts.

Justice Minister Domingos Sarmento confirmed the prison break, but would not comment further.

Calm has largely returned to East Timor since May, when street battles erupted between rival security forces, later spilling into gang warfare, looting and arson, thanks to the arrival of foreign peacekeepers and the installation of a new government.

But isolated incidents have occurred, with dozens of people wounded in clashes between gangs of youths last weekend.

Ramos-Horta said earlier this week he expected political stability to return to the country before elections scheduled for next year, and that the security situation should improve within five to six months.

Indonesia invaded the former Portuguese colony of East Timor in 1975 and ruled the tiny half-island territory until 1999, when a UN-organized plebiscite resulted in an overwhelming vote for independence.

Withdrawing Indonesian troops and their militia auxiliaries destroyed much of the country's infrastructure and killed at least 1,500 people.

The United Nations which administered the territory for 2 and a half years and then handed it to the Timorese in 2002 voted recently to send 1,600 international police and 34 military liaison officers ahead of presidential and parliamentary elections scheduled for 2007.

(China Daily 08/31/2006 page7)