Indonesia's military said it was mobilising all available troops in a hunt for Aceh separatist rebels blamed for the abduction of nine crewmen servicing the offshore oil industry.
The army also Tuesday accused the Free Aceh Movement (GAM) of demolishing two electricity pylons in the province, causing blackouts in several areas.
"We suspect GAM, especially the group led by Ishak Daud and active in East Aceh, did the kidnapping," said a military spokesman in the town of Lhokseumawe.
He said the kidnappers and their nine hostages had fled to the east. All security forces in North and East Aceh were involved in the hunt for them.
Daud told AFP the rebels had nothing to do with the abduction. "The entire length of the coast in East Aceh is being tightly guarded by TNI [armed forces] troops, so how can we have done this?" Daud said.
"Besides that, we do not have any interest in cases like this because our duty is to fight for the freedom of Aceh." Daud accused the military itself of staging the kidnapping to give it a pretext for massive search operations.
The Aceh police chief, Inspector General Yusuf Manggabarani, said a total of 9,000 soldiers and police would help try to track down the kidnappers.
The vessel Pelangi was headed for an oil exploration field off North Aceh when it was intercepted Sunday by armed men aboard two fishing boats. They forced the 11 crew to go ashore and abducted nine of them.
The Pelangi was chartered by ExxonMobil to carry oil exploration equipment but the crew were not employees of the company. ExxonMobil is the largest foreign investor in Aceh, Indonesia's westernmost province on Sumatra island. It taps liquefied natural gas in cooperation with Indonesian energy giant Pertamina.
Last year the gasfields were shut down for four months due to security disturbances, causing an estimated loss of 350 million dollars to the joint venture.
GAM and human rights groups have accused ExxonMobil of being implicated in human rights abuses because of its ties to the military. Hundreds of soldiers have been deployed to guard its operations against attacks by rebels.
In February the Kuala Lumpur-based Piracy Reporting Centre said separatist violence in Aceh was a leading contributor to piracy in Southeast Asia, with cases of crew members kidnapped for ransom.
Muttaqin, commenting on the power supply sabotage, said two pylons in isolated locations were demolished by the removal of nuts and bolts. He blamed the sabotage, which was discovered on Sunday and caused a blackout in almost half of Aceh, on GAM.
"This is not the first and will not be the last time they have sabotaged power structures in Aceh. They have already done this five times in the past," he said.
The local branch of the state power company was providing power for two hours a day for North Aceh from an old fuel-generated power plant.
Troops shot dead a rebel during a clash at Peusangan in the Bireuen district on Monday, Muttagin added.
The GAM commander in the West Aceh district, Abu Arafah, said troops conducting an anti-rebel sweep at Alue Mie shot dead an 18-year-old youth on Monday.
GAM has been fighting for an independent state in the province since 1976. More than 10,000 people, mostly civilians, have died in the conflict, including some 600 this year.