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Shooting rattles Banda Aceh
09/01/2005 08:28 - (SA)
Banda Aceh - Gunfire echoed through the main tsunami-hit city on Indonesia's Sumatra island Sunday, waking aid workers from their beds but hurting no one. The shooting was blamed on rebels and underscores the threat to the scores of foreigners helping victims of the December 26 disaster.
The shooting, which was near the UN headquarters in Banda Aceh, came as the death toll from the tsunami across 11 nations in Asia and as far as East Africa rose past 150 000.
Two weeks after walls of water flattened wide swaths of coastland around the Indian Ocean, people were still emerging from isolated villages, looking hungry and haunted. Staggered by the scale of the disaster, aid officials said they may have to feed as many as two million survivors a day for six months.
The rebels fired the shots before dawn Sunday at officers guarding the home of the deputy police chief of Aceh, the northernmost province on Sumatra, said police and officials at the nearby UN office.
Police returned fire but the insurgents, who do not have a history of targeting foreigners, vanished into the city, said police Sergeant Bambang Hariyanpo. There were no casualties. The UN building was not targeted, officials said.
Rebels have waged a separatist war in Aceh for nearly three decades. Thousands have been killed. There was an unofficial truce after last month's disaster, which left more than 100 000 dead in the province, but a series of recent skirmishes have prompted Indonesia's military to step up patrols for the guerrillas.
Grateful for presence of foreign troops
Adding to security concerns is the appearance of Laskar Mujahidin, an extremist group with alleged links to al-Qaeda. The group, which has set up an aid camp, says it is there to help and won't target foreigners, but its reassurances haven't dampened concerns.
Despite the fears, a stream of relief workers keeps pouring into the region. The World Food Programme is sending 170 staff. Other agencies have similar numbers. Australia has 500 soldiers helping out and another 150 on the way. Hundreds of US Marines and Navy personnel are there, but mostly based on ships just offshore. Singapore, Japan and Malaysia also have forces on the ground.
Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono has sought to reassure the nation that the foreign troops were in Sumatra purely to help the relief operations and had no other motives.
"The presence of foreign servicemen here is apolitical, they are conducting a humanitarian operations" Yudhoyono said, according to a report in Sunday's Jakarta Post newspaper. "After some time we will take over the operation, but for now we are grateful for their presence."
- AP
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