Five dead in Aceh, new attack reported near ExxonMobil area
Tuesday, July 10 2001 - 09:38 AM WIB
Aceh police spokesman Commissioner Sudarsono said the five died in an exchange of fire in the village of Panca in the Seulimeun subdistrict some 40 kilometers east of here on Monday.
But Sudarsono told AFP he had not yet received the full details of the incident.
The Aceh Besar spokesman of the separatist Free Aceh Movement (GAM), Ayah Sofyan told AFP that only one rebel had been killed in the fight and the four other victims were civilians "brutally shot dead by troops."
Sofyan said the bodies could not be retrieved yet as the military was barring access to the area.
Humanitarian workers in Banda Aceh confirmed the ban on entering the area.
Meanwhile, the North Aceh GAM spokesman, Teungku Jamaica, said rebels attacked a security outpost within the Cluster IV area of the closed off ExxonMobil gas operation in Lhoksukon on Monday.
"We fired grenades, mortars and gunshots in retaliation for the actions of security personnel who have continuously roughed up the local population around ExxonMobil," Jamaica qouted by AFP as saying.
Sudarsono said the attack consisted only of "one or two shots" and added there were no casualties.
However, Julia Tumengkol, ExxonMobil spokesperson told petromindo.com Tuesday that the incident happened way outside ExxonMobil perimeter.
The government, which is losing 100 million dollars a month in lost liquefied natural gas (LNG) exports, is pushing ExxonMobil to reopen its facilities closed due to the violence since March 9.
More than 1,000 people, most of them civilians, have been killed in Aceh this year in violence involving the separatist rebels and security forces.
Casualties have increased since the government began to deploy more troops in Aceh in April to crack down on the rebels who have been fighting for an Islamic state in the province since the mid-1970s. (*)