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.
Kouri Richins, a Utah mother who published a children’s book about grief after the death of her husband is to serve a life sentence for his murder without the possibility of parole, a judge ruled on Wednesday. Richins was convicted in March of aggravated murder for lacing a cocktail given to her husband, Eric Richins, with five times the lethal dose of fentanyl at their home near Park City in 2022. A jury also found her guilty of four other felonies, including insurance fraud, forgery and attempted murder for trying to poison her husband weeks earlier on Feb. 14, 2022, with a
DELA ROSA CASE: The whereabouts of the senator, who is wanted by the ICC, was unclear, while President Marcos faces a political test over the senate situation Philippine authorities yesterday were seeking confirmation of reports that a top politician wanted by the International Criminal Court (ICC) had fled, a day after gunfire rang out at the Philippine Senate where he had taken refuge fearing his arrest. Senator Ronald “Bato” dela Rosa, the former national police chief and top enforcer of former Philippine president Rodrigo Duterte’s “war on drugs,” has been under Senate protection and is wanted for crimes against humanity, the same charges Duterte is accused of. “Several sources confirmed that the senator, Senator Bato, is no longer in the Senate premises, but we are still getting confirmation,” Presidential
HELP DENIED? The US Department of State said that the Cuban leadership refuses to allow the US to provide aid to Cubans, ‘who are in desperate need of assistance’ US Secretary of State Marco Rubio on Wednesday said that Cuba’s leadership must change, as Washington renewed an offer of US$100 million in aid if the communist nation agrees to cooperate. Cuba has been suffering severe economic tumult led by an energy shortage that plunged 65 percent of the country into darkness on Tuesday. Cuba’s leaders have blamed US sanctions, but Rubio, a Cuban American and critic of the government established by Fidel Castro, said the system was to blame, including corruption by the military. “It’s a broken, nonfunctional economy, and it’s impossible to change it. I wish it were different,” he told
Myanmar yesterday published a parliamentary bill proposing the death sentence for those who detain or violently coerce people into working in online scam centers. Internet fraud factories have flourished in Myanmar, part of Southeast Asia’s scam economy, targeting Internet users worldwide with romance and cryptocurrency investment cons. The multibillion-dollar black market attracts many willing employees, but repatriated foreigners have also reported being trafficked to sites in Myanmar and tortured by scam center operators. The draft legislation would allow capital punishment for “violence, torture, unlawful arrest and detention, or cruel treatment against another person for the purpose of forcing them to commit online scams.” The
RSS