BANDA ACEH (Indonesia) May 27: Indonesia’s military on Tuesday reported more fierce clashes with separatist rebels in Aceh province and said it had seized a thickly forested island used as a guerrilla training camp.

Some 76 members of the Free Aceh Movement (GAM) have been killed since the military’s biggest operation for a quarter-century began on May 19, according to army figures.

The army also repeated denials that seven people killed in a shooting incident last week had been civilians.

The military command covering West and South Aceh reported four firefights in those areas late Monday and Tuesday, in which one paramilitary policeman and seven rebels were killed.

Troops on Tuesday took full control of Pulo Nasi island, off the provincial capital Banda Aceh, after a week-long land, sea and air operation, the army said.

“Today Aceh island, which is a group of islands including Nasi island, has been completely taken over by the armed forces and efforts to find the rest of GAM members are continuing,” said Colonel Geerhan Lentara, head of a local military command.

The military said rebels shot dead two civilians, one of them a woman aged 22, and injured two others in Aceh Tamiang on the border with North Sumatra province.

It said a soldier was wounded when rebels in Pidie district ambushed a truck convoy carrying food and other goods from Medan in North Sumatra. Authorities began running heavily guarded convoys after individual trucks were ambushed on the route.

Three tons of medicine from the United Nations children’s fund and the World Health Organisation arrived in Banda Aceh for distribution by Indonesian officials.

In Jakarta the government advised foreign aid workers to leave Aceh.

“We know that GAM wants to attract international attention by, among other things, disturbing foreigners,” said foreign ministry spokesman Marty Natalegawa.

He said any overseas aid should be channelled through the Indonesian Red Cross.

Up to 40,000 police and soldiers are confronting an estimated 5,000 rebels from GAM, which has been fighting for an independent state since 1976. Some 10,000 people, mostly civilians, have been killed in the past 27 years.

Right group Amnesty International, in a weekend report, said grave human rights abuses including the killing of children and other civilians were already being reported.—AFP