At least six killed, eight injured in Aceh

At least six people, including a soldier on guard at an ExxonMobil oil company complex were killed, and eight others injured in renewed violence in Indonesia's Aceh province, police and hospitals said yesterday.

The killings Thursday and yesterday brought the death toll related to violence between government and rebel forces to 35 since the start of the year, despite ongoing peace talks between the two sides in Geneva.

The soldier was killed late Friday in an attack on a military unit guarding the ExxonMobil natural gas complex at Lhokseumawe in North Aceh, senior police operations commissioner Kusbini Imbar said.

Imbar was unable to give further details of the attack, saying he was still receiving reports from the field, but residents said the shooting appeared to be the result of a clash between two government security units.

Exxon-Mobil, which produces liquefied natural gas from the giant Arun field in Aceh, has been warned by the rebels to stop production "until we gain our independence."

Imbar said there had been a spate of rebel ambushes in North Aceh district yesterday, but that casualty reports from the field had yet to be received.

"In the last two days the GAM [Free Aceh Movement] has raised the level of violence, resulting in some 18 incidents of shooting and clashes province-wide," he said.

He said the bodies of four men were found on Thursday in East Aceh, the victims of unknown assassins, while government troops shot dead one suspected GAM member in North Aceh who had tried to hide a homemade weapon.

In the Nisam sub-district of North Aceh, soldiers sweeping the area after being ambushed twice by GAM troops on Friday, shot and seriously wounded a six-year-old boy and a 16-year-old youth, residents and hospital officials said.

GAM forces also staged two ambushes on government troops in the Muara Dua sub-district of North Aceh, Imbar said.

After a fifth ambush, in North Aceh's Blang Mangat subdistrict, troops swept through the area and beat up 15 civilians, six of whom had to be hospitalized, a source at the Tjut Meutia hospital in Lhokseumawe said.

GAM East Aceh spokesman Ishak Daud told AFP more than 10 soldiers were killed during clashes in East Aceh on Thursday. Imbar denied his claim. "If there were even one solder killed, there would be flags flying at half mast in front of military offices," Imbar said.

Daud also said the soldiers had burned about 29 houses in East Aceh.

The stepped-up violence came after Jakarta and the exiled leadership of GAM announced after a three-day meeting in Geneva on Wednesday that they would observe a month-long moratorium on violence from January 15.

Details of the plan have yet to be released, but police and military officials have said they will forge ahead with a "law and order" campaign of house-to-house weapons searches on the same date. (*)