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Bodies recovered from mass graves in Aceh village

Soldiers and civilians worked yesterday to recover more bodies from two mass graves in Indonesia's Aceh province, where the military is fighting a separatist insurgency, officials said.

Twenty bodies were recovered earlier this week at two sites in the central Aceh villages of Guci and Krueng Pase, police say. Villagers have told authorities there may be as many as 300 bodies in the graves.

The graves are believed to date to 1999 and are not connected to the current military offensive, which was launched May 19.

Colonel Zainuri Lubis, a national police spokesman in Jakarta, said troops and villagers were digging yesterday at the graves, but he had yet to receive any reports of more bodies being found.

Villagers have accused rebels from the Free Aceh Movement of being behind the killings, police say, although there was no way to independently verify that.

Bakhtiar Abdullah, a Stockholm-based spokesman for the rebels, said Thursday he was unaware of the reports but insisted the graves were the work of the military and pro-Jakarta militias, which he accused of operating in central Aceh.

"This is absurd," Abdullah said. "This is a stronghold of the militias. It is most likely the militias with the help of the soldiers who carried out the massacres."

The Free Aceh Movement has been fighting for an independent state on the northern tip of Sumatra island since 1976, after Jakarta repeatedly reneged on promises made in the 1950s to give the oil- and gas-rich province wide-ranging autonomy.

More than 12,000 people have been killed in what observers have called one of the dirtiest wars in Southeast Asia. Both sides have been accused of wide-ranging rights abuses, including kidnappings, execution-style killings and burial of innocent victims in mass graves.

In August 2001, authorities unearthed a grave containing 48 bodies in west Aceh. Both sides accused the other of being behind the killings.

The military launched its most recent offensive against the rebels after a cease-fire signed in December collapsed amid violations by both sides.

The military insists its campaign in Aceh is progressing well and claims scores of rebels have been arrested or killed.
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