Banda Aceh – At least six people, including a soldier on guard at an Exxon-Mobil oil company complex were killed, and eight others injured in renewed violence in Indonesia's Aceh province, police and hospitals said Friday.
The killings Thursday and Friday brought the death toll related to violence between government and rebel forces to 35 since the start of the year, despite ongoing peace talks between the two sides in Geneva.
The soldier was killed late Friday in an attack on a military unit guarding the Exxon-Mobil natural gas complex at Lhokseumawe in North Aceh, senior police operations commissioner Kusbini Imbar told AFP.
Imbar was unable to give further details of the attack, saying he was still receiving reports from the field, but residents contacted by AFP said the shooting appeared to be the result of a clash between two government security units.
Exxon-Mobil, which produces liquefied natural gas from the giant Arun field in Aceh, has been warned by the rebels to stop production "until we gain our independence."
Imbar said there had been a spate of rebel ambushes in North Aceh district on Friday, but that casualty reports from the field had yet to be received. "In the last two days the GAM [Free Aceh Movement] has raised the level of violence, resulting in some 18 incidents of shooting and clashes province-wide," he said.
He said the bodies of four men were found on Thursday in East Aceh, the victims of unknown assassins, while government troops shot dead one suspected GAM member in North Aceh who had tried to hide a homemade weapon. In the Nisam subdistrict of North Aceh, soldiers sweeping the area after being ambushed twice by GAM troops on Friday, shot and seriously wounded a six-year-old boy and a 16-year-old youth, residents and hospital officials said.
GAM forces also staged two ambushes on government troops in the Muara Dua subdistrict of North Aceh, Imbar said.
After a fifth ambush, in North Aceh's Blang Mangat subdistrict, troops swept through the area and beat up 15 civilians, six of whom had to be hospitalized, a source at the Tjut Meutia hospital in Lhokseumawe told AFP.
GAM East Aceh spokesman Ishak Daud told AFP more than 10 soldiers were killed during clashes in East Aceh on Thursday.
Imbar denied his claim. "If there were even one solder killed, there would be flags flying at half mast in front of military offices," Imbar said. Daud also said the soldiers had burned about 29 houses in East Aceh.