Starving thousands get 'snowdrop' food from sky

By Greg Ansley

DARWIN - A new "snowdrop" method of food drops is being used to supply thousands of starving East Timorese.

Hercules aircraft continued their massive relief exercise from Darwin yesterday after the operation was interrupted by military priorities and Indonesian bureaucracy.

World Food Programme flights used the "snowdrop" technology to supply six tonnes of high-protein biscuits, enough to feed 3000 people for a day.

Three other flights dropped between six and 10 tonnes each of food to refugees hiding from pro-Jakarta militias who are still terrifying remote areas outside peacemakers' control.

The relief flights were suspended during the airlifting of more than 2500 troops into Dili because of the requirement to allow Indonesian officials either to inspect the aircraft at the capital's tiny airfield or to fly with them out of Dili to oversee the drops.

The airfield was too small to allow both humanitarian and military flights during the troop deployment.

The "snowdrop" airlift was designed to deliver food more accurately to the refugees, who, according to United Nations officials, continue to be attacked and intimidated by the militias.

The food is packed in small, specially designed parcels that spin slowly to the ground in snowflake-like spirals, allowing them to land more accurately and gently than conventional airdrops.

Aid agencies have also taken their first helicopter back to Dili, and have chartered a ship to shuttle 2600 tonnes of food at a time between Darwin and Dili.

Two Sikorsky helicopters will be used to fly the supplies to remote areas of the province until truck travel is safe.

Meanwhile, UN officials renewed warnings of militia danger after confirmed reports of continuing violence against refugees, and attacks on foreign journalists that left one reporter dead.

The Darwin office of the US-based peace agency the Carter Centre said violence against East Timorese refugees was spreading throughout Indonesia.

The centre said it had confirmed that Indonesian police and militiamen had killed at least one refugee travelling on September 13 by sea from Kupang to Bali.

It said officers wearing the T-shirts of the Kontingen Lorosai - the special force sent to Timor - had beaten two men, taken one away and later returned to tell the man's wife that he had been killed.

The centre claimed that on Java, refugees had been forced from places of refuge, and police and displaced militiamen had ordered churches, hotels, boarding houses and local people to report the presence of refugees, and had threatened those who gave them shelter.