Banda Aceh – Eleven people – three rebels, four policemen and four civilians – have been killed in the latest clashes between Indonesian government forces and separatist guerrillas in the restive province of Aceh, a report said Wednesday.

Rebels have also kidnapped three employees of a relay station of the state television station TVRI in East Aceh, the Banda Aceh-based Serambi daily said. An army information officer in Aceh, Major E. Sulistiadie, told the paper that three members of the Free Aceh Movement (GAM) were shot dead during a raid on a suspected rebel base in Babah Dua, West Aceh on Tuesday. Two others were captured and two handguns and ammunition were seized.

In another raid Tuesday at Mereubo in West Aceh, soldiers arrested six rebel members who surrendered without opposition, Sulistiadie said.

On Monday soldiers raided another suspected rebel base at Lhok Kruet in West Aceh but the guerrillas managed to flee and there were no casualties on either side.

The rebel commander for the Batee Iliek area, Tengku Darwis Jeunib, said his guerrillas killed four policemen in an ambush on a military truck on Tuesday. Police in Banda Aceh could not immediately confirm the report.

Four civilians were found shot dead in the Bukit area of Central Aceh on Tuesday, the spokesman for the Central Aceh GAM command, Wim Rime Raya, told the daily. They had been abducted the previous night by an unidentified group.

In East Aceh rebels Sunday kidnapped three technicians working at the relay station, residents there told Serambi. The Aceh military spokesman, Lieutenant Colonel Firdaus (eds:one name), said he was still checking the report.

The East Aceh GAM spokesman, Ishak Daud, said they were seized because they were cooperating with the military and the police but gave no details. "The three are in a healthy conditions and no harm has been done to them," Daud said, adding that they were being questioned. He said they were taken off a bus which had been halted by a rebel roadblock in East Aceh.

In the first half of this year more than 1,100 people have been killed in Aceh, in what observers say is the worst death toll in more than two decades of fighting. The GAM has been fighting since the 1970s to turn Aceh, a province rich in oil and gas on the northwestern tip of Sumatra, into an independent Muslim state.