Banda Aceh – The provincial parliament in Indonesia's troubled province of Aceh has elected a new governor as violence between government forces and separatist rebels killed at least seven people, reports and police said Sunday.

A plenary session of the Aceh People's Representatives Council (DPR) on Saturday elected Abdullah Puteh, 52, as the new governor of the province to replace outgoing Bustari Mansyur, the state Antara news agency said. Azwar Abubakar, was also elected as the new vice governor, Antara said.

Puteh was a student activist in the 1960s in the runup to the fall of Indonesia's founding president Sukarno and in the early years of the government of former president Suharto. He is also an executive of Suharto's then ruling Golkar party.

Meanwhile, seven people, including a policeman, were killed or found dead on the weekend in various parts of Aceh. Five rebels were shot dead during an armed clash with a joint police and military patrol in Bireum Bayeun, East Aceh on Saturday, Aceh police spokesman Senior Superintendent Kusbini Imbar told journalists here. He said the five were killed after some 20 rebels ambushed the patrol.

But residents said only four people were killed and that they were all civilians with no links to the separatist Aceh Merdeka (Free Aceh) movement. Residents said the four men were arrested alive at a roadside food stall in Bireum Bayeun on Saturday, taken aboard a truck to the police post but were later taken to the state hospital in Langsa already dead.

A policeman was slashed and stabbed to death by two unidentified men at his home in Uteun Geulinggang, North Aceh late on Friday night, the district's police chief Senior Superintendent Abadan Bangko said.

In Cot Matahe, also in North Aceh, three rebels ambushed a convoy of security personnel passing the area after dusk on Saturday but there were no casualties, Bangko said. The local rebel deputy commander, Abu Sofyan Daud, confirmed to AFP that his men had ambushed the convoy of four trucks and one minibus carrying troops returning from an anti-rebel operation. Daud claimed more than 10 soldiers were killed in the attack but Bangko denied it.

In Tapaktuan, the main town in the district of South Aceh, villagers found the body of a badly maimed man on Saturday, a local journalist said, adding that the motive for the killing was unknown.