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TITLE: Five Dead in Latest Aceh Violence |
AUTHOR: |
PUB: AFP |
DATE: January 13, 2001 |
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Five people, including a marine killed in a rebel ambush and a former journalist, died in fresh violence in Indonesia's troubled Aceh province, police and residents said Saturday. The former journalist, Rosmajar Puteh, 47, was helping his three children with their homework in his house in the Samadua district of South Aceh Friday night, when 12 gunmen came to the house, deputy South Aceh police chief Adjustant commissioner Agus Mandarwanto said. Mardawanto said two of the gunmen entered the house while others waited outside, subsequently shooting Puteh in front of his family. Local journalists quoted Puteh's wife as saying the gunmen gave no reason for shooting. They pumped three bullets into him and left, she said, adding that Puteh had been working as a construction contractor the past six years. In North Aceh, regional police spokesman commissioner Abdi Darmawan said a 20-year-old marine private was shot dead when suspected members of the Free Aceh Movement (GAM) ambushed a 50-man patrol in the Cjot Baloi area of Muara Dua Friday night. Suspected GAM members also launched a heavy weapons attack Friday night on a joint army-police barracks near the district capital of Lhokseumawe, but caused no casualties, Darmawan said. He added that suspected GAM members had also placed roadblocks on the main road from the provincial capital of Banda Aceh to the neighbouring province of North Sumatra. Police were still clearing the road as of midday Saturday. The deputy GAM commander of Dase area in North Aceh, Sofian Daud, denied responsibility for the blockades, and said that residents themselves had halted traffic to prevent troops sweeping through their villages. But Daud confirmed that GAM carried out the Cjot Baloi ambush, and the attack on the barracks, in which he said rockets and bazookas were used. Meanwhile residents in Muara Dua district of North Aceh said a woman was killed and three other civilians wounded in a shootout late Friday near the communications tower of the Exxon-Mobil oil company Arun liquefied natural gas (LNG) project. Police on Friday said the shootout, which also left one trooper dead, had been triggered by a GAM attack, but residents said two government security units had apparently mistakenly opened fire. In East Aceh residents in the Keude Lhok Nibong area said the driver of a motorcycle taxi was killed and several civilians arrested during a sweep by government troops. But East Aceh police commissioner, senior Superintendant Abdullah Hayati said he had no reports of the shooting of the driver or the arrests. Hayati said residents had found the body of an unidentified man in the Simpang Ulim area of East Aceh. The body bore torture marks and bullet wounds, he said. The latest killings brought to 58 the number of people killed in connection with the violence between the GAM and Indonesian security forces since the beginning of the year, by unofficial count. The Indonesian government and the exile GAM leadership, in a meeting near Geneva earlier this week, agreed to a month-long moratorium on violence in the province starting January 15. But the announcement failed to halt the violence, and Indonesian Foreign Minister Alwi Shihab has said Jakarta wants to review the "provisional agreement" before it comes into effect. The GAM has been fighting since the mid-1970's to win an independent sultanate in resource-rich Aceh province on the northern tip of Sumatra island. Separatist sentiment has been fuelled by almost a decade of harsh military operations in the area and repeated broken promises of autonomy by successive regimes in Jakarta, which has flatly ruled out independence for Aceh. END |