Dili - Australian military reported last night that the badly mutilated body of a white man had been found in the area where Financial Times journalist Sander Thoenes (30) went missing, Conor O'Clery reports.
Mr Thoenes, a Dutch national, has been the newspaper's Jakarta correspondent since 1997. He went missing after leaving his hotel in Dili.
An East Timorese reported that he had driven the journalist on a hired motorcycle through the Dili suburb of Becora when they encountered a road-block. They performed a U-turn but were pursued by six men wearing Indonesian army uniforms and riding three motorcycles. The uniformed men began firing shots.
He said his motorcycle then crashed and he fled the scene. His passenger, Mr Thoenes, appeared to have broken a leg.
The body found by the Australian military had bullet wounds to the stomach and mutilations to the face.
Earlier, an award-winning British journalist and an American photographer, who had been missing after an attack by pro-Indonesian militias on their vehicle in the Becora district of Dili, were last night found by UN peacekeepers, the BBC reported.
Jon Swain of the Sunday Times and the photographer Chip Hires were ambushed soon after their arrival in East Timor. Their Timorese driver was believed to have been shot in the head.
Brig David Richards told the BBC from East Timor that Swain and Hires had been rescued and were safe. He said they had been picked up just after midnight local time by soldiers using helicopters and armoured vehicles. They had fled to woodland and made a mobile phone call to the Sunday Times, which then appealed to the UN forces for help.