Health officials in Indonesia's conflict-hit Aceh province have treated thousands of refugees for illnesses since they were moved into camps around the province to avoid fighting, an official said Wednesday.
Health posts set up within each of the 16 refugee camps have recorded some 14,000 visits by patients since a military operation aimed at crushing separatist rebels began on May 19, said Teuku Muhammad, deputy head of the provincial health agency.
Muhammad listed respiratory ailments, skin disease, bronchitis and diarrhoea among the conditions suffered by the refugees.
"These are ordinary illnesses and we are already treating them," Muhammad told AFP by phone from Banda Aceh. "There are malnourished children." He said 14,000 is the number of visits, not the number of individual patients treated, and he did not consider the figure to be alarming.
"On a daily basis the number of visits is small," Muhammad said, estimating Aceh's total refugee population at about 32,000.
Authorities prepared the refugee camps after the military said it wanted to separate civilians from the Free Aceh Movement (GAM) rebels. Muhammad said the camps are equipped with tents, kitchens, clean water and toilets. There is no shortage of medicine, he said.
The government said last week it would improve water supplies after officials reported that some refugees are suffering health problems due to overcrowding and a lack of clean water. Some of the refugees have been moved into camps against their will in what the military says is an attempt to avoid civilian casualties.
Also Wednesday police said they have arrested a former senior spokesman for GAM. Irwandi Yusuf, alias Isnandar al-Pase, is being detained at a police station in Banda Aceh and faces charges of treason, said provincial police spokesman Sayed Husaini.
The bespectacled Al-Pase, a veterinarian by profession, speaks fluent English and was frequently quoted in news reports as GAM's military spokesman. Yusuf is among the most senior of what the military says are some 535 rebels who were detained or surrendered during the operation.
The military says another 270 GAM members have been killed in the operation launched to neutralize the rebels after attempts to negotiate a solution to the 27-year conflict failed.
Eight of the rebels died in four separate firefights across Aceh Tuesday, Lieutenant Colonel Ahmad Yani Basuki, spokesman for the operation, said Wednesday.
The government no longer talks publicly about a political solution. But a senior US official told reporters that Indonesian authorities see the military approach as "a tactic to create a more favourable set of circumstances on the ground."
Speaking Tuesday, the official who spoke of condition of anonymity said "there's every intention of pursuing a comprehensive political approach to the process." Authorities have strictly controlled operations of foreign humanitarian organizations in Aceh and have imposed some restrictions on journalists.
"We have made clear that more transparency not less transparency is needed in Aceh," the US official said.