Rebel governor's wife arrested

BANDA ACEH: The wife of a senior rebel commander was among four guerrillas arrested on Monday during a raid on a rebel hideout at Manggeng in Southwest Aceh district, military spokesman Lt. Col. Asep Sapari said.

The woman named Yusna Rahaini is the wife of the local Free Aceh Movement (GAM) commander, Abdul Rahman, Sapari said.

He also said that four separate clashes between troops and rebels erupted in Aceh but no one was killed.

Meanwhile, police in the neighbouring North Sumatra province had arrested seven men who had been selling automatic weapons to GAM rebels, said Brigadier General Sunarko Danu Ardanto, a national police spokesman.

He said the seven had in the past purchased the weapons -- mostly Kalashnikov rifles -- from distributors in Thailand. Police are still hunting for 11 other accomplices of the seven, Ardanto said.

The government last May imposed martial law in Aceh and launched a huge operation to crush GAM rebels, who have been fighting for an independent state on the tip of Sumatra island since 1976.

More than 1,300 guerrillas have been killed and 2,000 others have been arrested or have surrendered since then, the military says. -- AFP