Banda Aceh – Separatist rebels ambushed an Indonesian military truck in the troubled province of Aceh, leaving a civilian killed by a stray bullet and a soldier wounded, police said Sunday.

The armed separatists attacked the truck on Saturday on a road in the hilly Tangga Besi area of South Aceh, sparking a firefight between troops and the rebels, local police chief Lieutenant Colonel Teuku Keumala said.

Shots fired by the rebels hit a passing vehicle, killing the driver and wounding one of the passengers, Keumala said. A soldier was also wounded in the neck in the attack, he added.

Meanwhile on Sunday, two bodies were found in the Langkat Tamiang area of East Aceh, human rights activist Husni Husin told AFP. Husin, of the Aceh branch of the Commission for Violence and Missing Persons (Kontras), said the two victims were among nine people arrested by security forces on Thursday.

Husin also charged that human rights activists monitoring the violence in the oil-rich province have been "terrorized and intimidated" by the Indonesian military. "It's very difficult for us to investigate cases of violence because of continuing terror and intimidation by the TNI (military) apparatus," he said.

He accused the military of making arbitrary arrests during sweeps to find alleged members of the separatist Free Aceh Movement (GAM), who have waged a guerilla war against Jakarta rule since 1976 for a free Islamic state in the region on the northern tip of Sumatra island.

On Saturday, a man's body was found in the Padanglila are of Pidie, local police chief Lieutenant Colonel Endang Bagus said. The body bore gunshot wounds to the head, he said.

A women identified as Habiman Abdul Rahman, 48, was shot dead by unidentified attackers in the village of Meunasah Mee, North Aceh, on Friday night, police chief Lieutenant Colonel Syafei Aksal said. The motive for the killing remained unknown, he said.

Daily clashes between Indonesian troops and the separatists as well as reprisals from both sides have left more than 250 people dead so far this year. In the past ten months, more than 1,340 people have been killed as a result of security forces' attempts to quell the separatist movement, Aceh police chief Brigadier General Bachrumsyah Kasman said on Wednesday. Of the total, 653 were civilians, 538 police and military personnel and 153 separatist rebels, Kasman said, adding they died between May 1999 and February.

A decade of harsh military operations against GAM rebels, that ended in 1998, and the syphoning off of the province's resources have fuelled popular resentment against Jakarta.