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The British wearily intervened at Ayios Theodores, near Limassol, and at Kokkina, on the coast, to break up skirmishes between partisan bands of Cypriots. As his armored car backed around tight hairpin turns high above the green-black sea pounding the rocks below, with Bren guns sounding from the ridge above him, a British major grunted: "Bloody mess, this is." Each new dispatch reported more ambushes on the highways, food shortages in the isolated Turkish Cypriot villages, and new landings of guns and munitions along the coast. Most ominous of all was the news that the Cypriot terrorists were reverting to their old habit of shooting not only at one another but also at British soldiers, who were a hated target during the four-year struggle for freedom.