Dili (AsiaNews/Agencies) – East Timor is preparing for upcoming elections in an atmosphere of growing social and political tensions.
Indonesia closed its border with the small country after a group of rebels attacked on Sunday a police station in Maliana near the border taking dozens of automatic weapons with them.
The international forces present in the country launched a man hunt for Major Alfredo Reinaldo, a renegade army officer and former of military police chief suspected of leading the group that carried out the attack.
Major Reinaldo led a military revolt last May, which resulted in violence between rival security forces and the collapse of the government of then Prime Minister Mari Alkatiri. He was later arrested but managed to escape from prison.
Analysts fear that tensions might rise as the date for the April 9 presidential and parliamentary elections get closer.
In its short history the small state, independent from Indonesia since 1999, has had its existence marred by ethnic and political violence.
Current Prime Minister and 1996 Nobel Prize laureate José Ramos Horta is running for president. Mr Ramos Horta is a founder of FRETILIN (Frente Revolucionária de Timor-Leste Independente, i.e. the Revolutionary Front for an Independent East Timor).