The young man pulled his T-shirt up to his nose, peered over the little round concrete wall, drew back, blessed himself and hurried away through the old tyres and junk in the back yard. The rest of the kids in line - some as young as 10 - did the same.
The well at the back of Manuel Carrascalao's house in Dili was yesterday a centre of pilgrimage and a macabre attraction. The youths were arriving back in the capital from the mountains where they ran to escape the militia terror two weeks ago.
Just below the rim of the well was the putrifying body of an independence supporter. "There are 20 more down there," said the young man. It was impossible to tell if this was true, as one could not see deeper into the well.
Now that the United Nations peacekeepers have arrived in Dili and most of the pro-Jakarta militia have gone, the counting of the dead has begun. It is proving very difficult, with eye-witnesses still hiding or shipped out to West Timor, and with evidence possibly covered up by the militias and Indonesian soldiers. In addition, most of the territory is still inaccessible.
Everyone knew there had been killings in the last two weeks at the house of nuel Carascalao, Mr Carrascalao, a prominent member of the East Timor Resistance Committee (CNRT). This had been the scene of an earlier massacre on April 17th, when the Aitarak militia had murdered more than 20 refugees hiding there. But things were not so simple at other alleged massacre sites.
It was widely reported last week, for example, that the Dili Diocesan Centre nearby had also been the scene of the murder of 20 or so people. The fine old Portuguese building is now a gutted skeleton where yesterday a strong wind caused the twisted, dangling remains of the corrugated iron roof to creak and groan like banshees.
A line of three bullet holes in one wall, with several more much higher up, indicated some shooting, but of blood or bodies among the ankle-deep debris there was no sign. A police station near the airport was another alleged massacre site, with bodies said to have been piled high in a cell, but the rooms showed no signs of slaughter.
It was the same at Bishop Carlos Belo's house on the seafront, where witnesses reported two dozen people killed, mainly by gunfire in the days after the September 4th announcement that East Timor had voted to break with Indonesia. But the priests and nuns there say only one person was shot dead.
Except for the Carrascalao house, people were killed in Dili mostly in separate incidents, "one here, one there, maybe 100 altogether", said Father Francisco as he supervised the preparation of lunch in the garden beside the burnt-out residence.
UN peacekeepers have also yet to turn up evidence of large-scale killing sites. "If there were massacres, where are all the mass graves?" asked Brig David Richards of the British Contingent of the International Force for East Timor (Interfet). "In Sierra Leone there were bodies all over the place. I haven't seen that here."
"There is some evidence that there have been some awful acts," said Maj-Gen Peter Cosgrove, the Australian commander of Interfet. "I'd like to see a professional investigation coming in rapidly."
A senior Red Cross official, Mr Symeon Antoulas, said in Dili yesterday that because of very limited information, "we cannot confirm reports of mass killings".
He also disclosed that the International Committee of the Red Cross estimated the number of displaced persons in East Timor at 150,000, and not 600,000, as a Jakarta newspaper said last week.
"It maybe was enough to kill here and there to cause terror and achieve their ends of making the population flee, especially with their record of massacres earlier this year," said another senior aid official, speaking anonymously.
A similar strategy of inducing fear - and also testing the resolve of the UN peacekeepers - seemed to be in operation yesterday in the unpredictable streets of Dili, where the militia and some elements of the Indonesian military caused several incidents.
Three truckloads of Indonesian soldiers of East Timorese origin, who are withdrawing from the capital of the former Portuguese colony, careered through the town yesterday morning, firing in the air at three locations and being pursued first by Gurkhas of the British army and then by Australian soldiers before driving off.
British marines later chased a militia man through an Indonesian army (TNI) barracks after shots were again fired in the air, almost causing an angry confrontation with the Indonesian soldiers. The militiaman got away but later the British soldiers rescued him from a crowd which a British officer said was "kicking him to death" because they recognised him as a member of the Aitarak militia.
The withdrawing TNI also burned another barracks in the capital yesterday as it proceeded with a reduction from 11 to six battalions, causing further stress in the relationship between Interfet and the multinational army. Gen Cosgrove criticised their action as "destroying the chance to build the city rapidly".
With 3,000 UN troops now in East Timor, Interfet has tightened its control of Dili since it arrived and has now surrounded the airport with deep defence bunkers and machine-gun posts.
The most serious challenge facing Interfet in the coming days is likely to be not in Dili but west of the city near Liquica, where militia members were reportedly gathering for a confrontation. The reports of this build-up were being investigated, said Gen Cosgrove, who would not detail what he planned to do to prevent a de facto partition of East Timor.
AFP reports from Jakarta:
Indonesia yesterday lifted martial law in East Timor and said it expected to hand over control of security in the territory to the UN-approved force there today or tomorrow.
A wave of violent protests swept across Indonesia yesterday after parliament rubber-stamped a bill allowing the military to revoke virtually every civil liberty in a state of emergency.
Reporters and protesters said three demonstrators were killed in clashes with riot police and soldiers in the capital, Jakarta. Officials and hospitals could not confirm the death toll. A total of 53 people were injured. Some 10,000 protesters clashed with police on a road to parliament.
"This government wants the military to take over everything," said Mr Dani Syahrir (21), a student leader. "We, the students of Indonesia, absolutely reject that because it means the death of democracy."