UNITED NATIONS, June 12 (Xinhua) -- The United Nations Monday appealed for nearly 19 million U.S. dollars in humanitarian assistance for an estimated 133,000 people who have been displaced by recent violence in Timorese capital of Dili.

    Assessments by the UN and partners have identified 55 locations in and around the capital that host around 70,000 of those people, while a further 63,000 people have fled to the countryside, placing strain on scarce resources and food, the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) said.

    The UN agencies and their non-governmental partners, which were already providing long-term development assistance in East Timor, officially known as Timor-Leste, had been able to respond to the sudden crisis on a short-term basis.

    With the situation not yet resolved, however, Monday's appeal aims to fund humanitarian work over the next three months, OCHA said.

    Speaking to reporters in New York, UN Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs Jan Egeland said that humanitarian assistance was crucial to efforts to end the unrest in the country, which erupted after the dismissal in April of nearly 600 soldiers from the army, a third of the total armed forces.

    "Those who have been displaced by the deplorable violence of the past weeks need our help. The United Nations has been working with the Timorese since before independence; we must now provide for those who fear harm may befall them," Egeland said.

    "If we do not succeed in providing this assistance there will be much more tension, if we can have a successful humanitarian program there is a little bit of a respite to solve the political and the security one," he said. "We have to invest in all three areas simultaneously, not only on the humanitarian side."

    At present an international force including Australia, Malaysia and Portugal are helping to restore order in East Timor at the government's request. The UN presence has decreased gradually since the original UN Transitional Administration (UNTAET) was setup in 1999 after the country voted for independence from Indonesia.

    Once independence was attained in 2002, that mission was replaced with a downsized operation, the UN Mission of Support in East Timor (UNMISET), which in turn was succeeded by the current residual UN office in Timor-Leste (UNOTIL). Enditem