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East Timor's prime minister, Xanana Gusmao
East Timor's prime minister, Xanana Gusmao. Photograph: Firdia Lisnawati/AP
East Timor's prime minister, Xanana Gusmao. Photograph: Firdia Lisnawati/AP

East Timor declares emergency after president shot

This article is more than 16 years old

The prime minister of East Timor today declared a 48-hour state of emergency, including a nocturnal curfew, after renegade troops attempted to assassinate him and the president.

Xanana Gusmao escaped what he described as a failed coup attempt unharmed. But the president, Jose Ramos-Horta, was in a critical condition and on a ventilator after he was shot when the rebels fired on his official residence at around dawn.

The 58-year-old Nobel peace prizewinner was flown by air ambulance to Darwin, in neighbouring Australia, for further treatment after undergoing initial surgery at the international military base in the capital, Dili.

Last night a bullet was removed from his lung. Doctors said the next 48 hours would be critical.

The Australian prime minister, Kevin Rudd, decided to send another 150 troops to beef up the 800-strong force of peacekeepers stationed in the impoverished south-east Asian nation since factional violence in 2006 left 37 people dead and 150,000 homeless.

Gusmao, 61, held an emergency cabinet meeting after Ramos-Horta was hit during the gun battle, at his home on the outskirts of Dili, which left the fugitive rebel leader Major Alfredo Reinado and one of his men dead.

Reinado was wanted on murder charges in connection with the 2006 killings after he led renegade members of the security forces, who had been sacked. Most of the rebels later put down their guns, but he and a handful of well-armed comrades hid in East Timor's jungle-covered hills, threatening the government with force last November.

Gunmen in two cars attacked the president's home at about 7am, when he was probably coming back from his regular morning jog on the nearby beach.

He was wounded twice. One bullet hit him in the back and passed through his stomach.

Isabelle Abric, head of public information for the UN peacekeeping mission, lives close by and heard the initial burst of four or five shots before the president's bodyguards fired back, killing two attackers and sending the others fleeing.

"I didn't pay much attention to it at first," she said. "I thought it might have been someone shooting in the air. Then I saw the ambulance arrive, and the international stabilisation force troops and UN police rushed to the residence."

About an hour later, other attackers on a mountain road fired on Gusmao's convoy as he travelled from his house in the hills to his Dili office. No one was hurt, though one car crashed off the road when it was hit.

Gusmao gave an address on national radio pledging that all steps would be taken to maintain order amid fears of renewed violence fomented by Reinado loyalists.

"Even though the state has been attacked by an armed group and the president was wounded, the state is in control of stability," he said.

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