Jakarta – Indonesia's police declared "zero tolerance" on looters and would shoot at offenders, admitting Wednesday warnings against rampant plundering of food trucks and stores had been futile.

"To the looters, and not protesters, there will be no more tolerance and we are left with no other option but to shoot on sight," Lieutenant General Dibyo Widodo, national police chief, told a news conference here. But he said only rubber-coated bullets would be used against bandits targetting produce trucks along the northern coast of Java.

The Kompas daily quoted central Java police chief Major General Nurfaizi as saying looting had become more "brutal" and was disrupting the national economy. Crime has surged on the north Java coastal route since the economic crisis hit the country in July last year, driving millions into poverty.

Warehouses and provisions shops have been looted, often following false rumors of handouts of free or cut-price food. Widodo said 86 police stations were vandalized or burned by the public amid the continual riots and unrest in the country over the past year. Thirteen police were recorded killed in 1998, about a hundred seriously wounded and some 300 others injured.

He said police had so far been unable to find or catch any provocators that might have instigated the violence against minority Christians here on November 23, which left at least 13 people dead.