Indonesian troops fired artillery and moved hundreds of villagers from their homes during an attack yesterday on a suspected separatist rebel base, a local resident said.
The resident heard rounds fired throughout the morning towards a hilly area in Juli sub-district just south of Bireuen town. The private RCTI television station also showed pictures of artillery being fired.
About 1,000 residents of Juli were moved from their homes yesterday morning on military, police and private vehicles, the resident said.
PHOTO: REUTERS
The evacuees, some carrying clothes and bedding, were taken to Cot Gapo village east of Bireuen where tents had been prepared for them.
The armed forces on May 19 launched a major operation aimed at wiping out separatist rebels of the Free Aceh Movement (GAM).
The military has said it hopes to separate residents from the rebels.
Violence in Aceh has left at least seven more people dead over the past two days, residents and the military said.
Two armed men wearing balaclavas shot dead a religious teacher, Muhammad Yusuf Daud, 45, on Wednesday night at Peuraden village in Bireuen district, a local resident said.
Daud was inside the village worship hall teaching youngsters about the Koran when two men called him outside. They talked for a while and then shot him in the chest and head, the resident said.
Two of the pupils were Daud's children, who fainted at the sight of their slain father's blood, the resident said.
Official military figures mid-week put at 175 the number of rebels killed, along with 24 soldiers and four policemen, since the military operation began. The military has put the civilian death toll at 18.
Humanitarian workers said they found four more corpses with gunshot wounds in separate locations Thursday in the Peusangan and Jeumpa areas of Bireuen.
A military spokesman, Captain Anang, said a Kopassus special forces soldier and a GAM rebel were missing after an incident off the coast of South Aceh Thursday.
Four Kopassus soldiers had arrested a pair of GAM rebels who tried to flee by boat, Anang said. As the soldiers brought their captives back to shore in a boat one of them shoved a soldier and both fell overboard, he said. Their whereabouts are unknown.
The three other soldiers were then forced to shoot dead the other rebel who also confronted them, Anang said.
Another rebel was shot dead separately during a raid by troops in Singkil district on Thursday, Anang said. Troops seized two pistols.
Citing the hostilities, the US State Department warned that "American citizens are strongly urged to avoid traveling to Aceh and those already present should leave immediately."
Press reports in Jakarta yesterday said the military has given American journalist William Nessen two days, starting from Thursday night, to get away from GAM rebels with whom he is believed to be travelling.
After that time his safety cannot be guaranteed if a firefight occurs, the military said.
Troops who said they were investigating reports of rebel activity, shot dead a German tourist in Aceh on June 4.
The long-running conflict has also taken a toll on local government, a report yesterday said.
Mohanto Aki, a senior Home Affairs Department official, quoted by the Detikom online news service, said that of 5,082 villages in the province, 1,034 no longer have a functioning local government and another 1,615 do not function as they should.
THE ‘MONSTER’: The Philippines on Saturday sent a vessel to confront a 12,000-tonne Chinese ship that had entered its exclusive economic zone The Philippines yesterday said it deployed a coast guard ship to challenge Chinese patrol boats attempting to “alter the existing status quo” of the disputed South China Sea. Philippine Coast Guard spokesman Commodore Jay Tarriela said Chinese patrol ships had this year come as close as 60 nautical miles (111km) west of the main Philippine island of Luzon. “Their goal is to normalize such deployments, and if these actions go unnoticed and unchallenged, it will enable them to alter the existing status quo,” he said in a statement. He later told reporters that Manila had deployed a coast guard ship to the area
HOLLYWOOD IN TURMOIL: Mandy Moore, Paris Hilton and Cary Elwes lost properties to the flames, while awards events planned for this week have been delayed Fires burning in and around Los Angeles have claimed the homes of numerous celebrities, including Billy Crystal, Mandy Moore and Paris Hilton, and led to sweeping disruptions of entertainment events, while at least five people have died. Three awards ceremonies planned for this weekend have been postponed. Next week’s Oscar nominations have been delayed, while tens of thousands of city residents had been displaced and were awaiting word on whether their homes survived the flames — some of them the city’s most famous denizens. More than 1,900 structures had been destroyed and the number was expected to increase. More than 130,000 people
A group of Uyghur men who were detained in Thailand more than one decade ago said that the Thai government is preparing to deport them to China, alarming activists and family members who say the men are at risk of abuse and torture if they are sent back. Forty-three Uyghur men held in Bangkok made a public appeal to halt what they called an imminent threat of deportation. “We could be imprisoned and we might even lose our lives,” the letter said. “We urgently appeal to all international organizations and countries concerned with human rights to intervene immediately to save us from
RISING TENSIONS: The nations’ three leaders discussed China’s ‘dangerous and unlawful behavior in the South China Sea,’ and agreed on the importance of continued coordination Japan, the Philippines and the US vowed to further deepen cooperation under a trilateral arrangement in the face of rising tensions in Asia’s waters, the three nations said following a call among their leaders. Japanese Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba, Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jr and outgoing US President Joe Biden met via videoconference on Monday morning. Marcos’ communications office said the leaders “agreed to enhance and deepen economic, maritime and technology cooperation.” The call followed a first-of-its-kind summit meeting of Marcos, Biden and then-Japanese prime minister Fumio Kishida in Washington in April last year that led to a vow to uphold international
RSS