DARWIN (Reuters) - The United Nations said on Thursday it was working for the return of tens of thousands of East Timorese forced into West Timor, amid fears they could come under fresh attacks from pro-Jakarta militias or starve. Australia, which is leading an international armed force into bloodied East Timor in a few days, also said it would work towards the repatriation of refugees, now facing a critical shortage of water and food. Community Aid Abroad executive director Jeremy Hobbs said the agency feared the refugees may be targets of revenge over the deployment of the U.N. international armed force in East Timor. The Uniting Church in Australia said earlier this week that the militias were hunting down and executing independence supporters in refugee camps in neighbouring West Timor, an Indonesian province. „They are basically hostages,“ Hobbs told Reuters. „Apart from being very traumatised, there is a lack of food so people are now quite hungry, there is a real shortage of water and there have been a lot of people with malaria and with waterborne diseases, where they have been forced into situations where there is not safe drinking water,“ Hobbs said. Pro-Jakarta militias, abetted by elements of the Indonesian military, have killed thousands and displaced hundreds of thousands of East Timorese in violence after the territory voted overwhelmingly on August 30 to end 23 years of often brutal rule by Jakarta. United Nations and Indonesian government officials were meeting in Jakarta to discuss access to the refugees who fled to West Timor, said David Wimhurst, spokesman for the United Nations mission in East Timor (UNAMET). Wimhurst said some refugees initially taken to West Timor had been moved to other parts of Indonesia. Hobbs also said the agency feared for the lives of people forced into hiding in East Timor‘s mountains and forests. The United Nations said on Monday that many of the refugees in East and West Timor were scavenging for food and eating plant roots, and faced starvation unless emergency aid airdrops arrived soon. An Australian defence spokesman said late on Thursday that a planned aid airlift scheduled earlier in the day had been delayed, likely until Friday. An Australian aid official said the U.N was still seeking final approvals from Indonesian for the aid drops. Jakarta reluctantly on Sunday gave approval for the multinational force to enter East Timor, but the U.N mandate over the action does not extend to West Timor. World Vision aid worker Sanjay Sojwal said from the capital of West Timor, Kupang, that he did not believe the refugees would be targets for militia retribution. But he said he was concerned the world might forget their plight once the international force moved into East Timor. An estimated 3,000 to 5,000 people were streaming across the border from East Timor each day, and there was a report that another 32,000 were to be moved from Dili. Sojwal said about 80,000 refugees were in and around the border town of Atambua, which normally had a population of about 12,000 people. The limited food they had been able to bring with them was likely to last only another three or four days. Sojwal said World Vision‘s team of local staff had obtained access to the refugees from both the Indonesian military and militias and had assisted in improving water supplies. But, he said World Vision had about 400 metric tonnes of rice in Kupang which it was unable to move to Atambua because the militia had hijacked trucks.