Enrique Soriano – The bleak panorama that unfolds on the drive from Lhokseumawe, the main town in North Aceh, to Medan is punctuated only by the dozens of armed checkpoints manned by the Indonesian army and the police.

But even the checkpoints thin out before the town of Idi Rayeuk. Or what's left of it. All the shops are boarded up and the houses are empty; many of them razed to the ground.

The trail of destruction stretches from the town of Idi to Langsa, about 40 km away. Except for piles of blackened debris that mark the places where houses have been, little evidence exists to show that people once lived here.

Further down the road from Idi, a father and his son scavenge through the debris of a cluster of burnt houses. Words written on a wall with charred wood and paint say that seven people have been killed in the cluster.

Some of the villagers, emboldened by the thought that their story may reach elsewhere in the world, offer to show what the troops did to their houses and point to the bullet holes in the wooden walls.

On March 24, at around 10 am, eight trucks carrying Indonesian army and police troops stopped and "started to shoot everywhere", the villagers recount in tones, rising from quiet whispers to heated indignation.

The soldiers rounded up seven men, which they picked at random, and then gathered the villagers in front of a provision shop. They burnt the shop, shot six of the men and threw their bodies and the last one, who was still alive, into the burning shop.

Nearing Langsa, the scene changes as if crossing over a line to normalcy. Some shops are open and children play in the fields. An old lady sweeps leaves into a burning pile. Coffee shops were filled with smiling men.

But underneath this, no one wants to talk about their neighbouring town. "Oh, something happened there, but we are not exactly sure what," said one. "Some accident. We don't know what happened there," added another, his eyes cast to the ground.