Indonesian troops have killed eight separatists in Aceh province, the military said Monday.

Two of the eight Free Aceh Movement (GAM) members were killed in a skirmish in Nagan Raya district on Sunday, said Lieutenant Colonel Asep Sapari, an Aceh military spokesman.

He said army troops shot dead the other six in separate clashes on Saturday. "We have received confirmation from officers who were involved in the skirmishes with GAM," he said, adding that six guerillas had also surrendered to the military since Saturday.

Troops seized two Kalashnikov rifles, a satellite phone and hundreds of rounds of ammunition, Sapari said. No GAM officials could be immediately reached for comment.

Sapari said last Thursday that the Indonesian military had stopped publishing figures for killed rebels.

More than 1,300 guerrillas have been killed since the start of a military offensive May 2003 and 2,000 others have been arrested or have surrendered out of an initial GAM force estimated at about 5,000, the military has said.

Human rights groups have questioned whether all those in the casualty count were actually rebels, partly because the number of weapons the military seized from the dead was fewer than half the number of casualties.