Jakarta – Indonesian police admitted Monday they "acted too hastily" in opening fire on a group in the troubled province of Aceh, leaving at least four people injured.

North Aceh deputy police chief Major Amrin Remico told AFP no one was killed but two people were injured by gunshots and two others were slightly injured while trying to run away. "Our members were haunted by fear and trauma. But I must admit they have acted too hastily and we have handed over the case to the military police," Remico said.

He said two police sergeants who allegedly fired the shots were being detained for questioning by military police in Lhokseumawe, the main town in North Aceh district.

Scores of people had come to a police station in Blangjruen near Lhokseumawe in the early hours of Sunday, allegedly to report a traffic accident, Remico said. But police, seeing the group heading towards them and traumatized by past attacks against security personnel since December, began to shoot at the crowd.

The head of Iskandar Muda Legal Aid Foundation in Lhokseumawe, Yacob Hamzah, said one civilian was shot dead in the incident and one injured. He said police had not made any arrests. While Remico said the crowd that came to the police post numbered in the hundreds, Hamzah said they were only ten of them.

Meanwhile an angry mob Saturday burnt two houses and one car belonging to two suspected military collaborators in Aceh, the state Antara news agency said Monday.

Hundreds of people went to a house in Muko Kurang village in Pidie district to seek a man named Sulaeman whom they believed had been an informer when Aceh was under military operation status for about a decade, Antara quoted Pidie military chief Lieutenant Colonel Iskandar MS as saying.

Unable to find Sulaeman, who fled by car to the house of his friend Mahdi, the mob grew furious and torched his house before setting fire to Mahdi's house as well. Mahdi was also suspected by the mob to have been an informer. Security personnel finally managed to quell the mob.