May 20, 2003	Tuesday	Rabi-ul-Awwal 17, 1424

BANDA ACEH, May 19: Indonesia’s military launched rocket attacks on rebels in Aceh on Monday and troops began parachuting in as a big offensive got under way just hours after the president put the province under martial law.

Footage broadcast on a local television network showed smoke rising from a set of hills near the local airport after two planes swooped low over it.

Hercules transport planes dropped scores of troops near the airport. Laden with heavy packs, many took defensive positions in fields. Officials also said around 700 fresh marines had come ashore near the industrial town of Lhokseumawe.

Just after midnight on Sunday, President Megawati Sukarnoputri gave the go-ahead for war against the rebels after last-ditch peace talks in Tokyo collapsed, leaving a landmark peace pact welcomed by Aceh’s four million people in tatters.

“The offensive has begun...Two planes launched the rockets, many of them,” Major General Erwin Sujono, an operational commander, told reporters at the airport without elaborating on the precise targets and their location.

Another military official said offensive patrols had begun and operations would focus on six parts of Aceh.

In Banda Aceh, there was little sign of martial law as children went to school, shops opened and traffic clogged the city’s busy central market.

Tengku Mohammad, 47, said Acehnese felt helpless and prayed that the war would not be long and costly in human life.

“Everyone in Aceh is in fear, I have resigned myself to God,” said the trader, wearing an olive green shirt and sarong as he leaned against a pillar inside the city’s grand mosque.—Reuters