TNI claims to have shot GAM commander
BANDA ACEH, Aceh (JP): The Indonesian Military (TNI) claimed on Tuesday to have shot dead the operations commander of the Free Aceh Movement (GAM), Ayah Muni, and four other rebels during a fierce gunfight in Cot Keueng, Kota Baro district in Aceh Besar.
Local military spokesman Maj. E. Sulistiadie said the gunfight took place on Saturday when security personnel raided a house, believed to be the headquarters of the separatist group in the area.
"Ayah Muni was shot in the clash with Army personnel. His body was hidden by his followers," Sulistiadie told reporters here on Tuesday.
Sulistiadie claimed that confirmation on Ayah's death was collected from local residents and reports from military intelligence.
During the raid, security personnel also confiscated two Kijang vans, an L-300 minivan, three motorcycles, two mortar launchers, a machine to assemble homemade explosives, an AK-47 rifle, the officer said.
News on the reported death of Ayah Muni, however, was immediately denied by Ayah Sofyan, spokesman of the separatist group in Aceh Besar.
He maintained that Ayah Muni was involved in a gunfight but was only shot in the leg and did not die.
"Ayah Muni is still alive. He survived and escaped after getting shot in the leg. So news of his death is a complete lie," Ayah Sofyan told The Jakarta Post.
Local Serambi daily reported that a man claiming to be Ayah Muni telephoned the daily late on Monday and said that he was still alive and his wounds were not too serious.
Separately, Sofyan Daud, spokesman of the rebel group in North Aceh, also denied police allegations that the separatist group was responsible for the death of 45-year-old Abdul Halim, a teacher at a junior high school in Lhok Sukon.
Abdul was shot on Monday morning inside the school principal's office after two unidentified men forced the principal to call Abdul into the room.
Students and other teachers ran out of their classes in panic upon hearing the gunshots.
"It is the police who were behind the shooting and make out that it was done by GAM. The shooting was done deliberately to tarnish our image," Sofyan charged.
Separately in Pidie regency, some 120 kilometers east of Banda Aceh, the house of a local legislator from the Abul Yatama faction was set a blaze by six unknown men on Monday.
Councillor Ahmadi was not at his residence when the arson took place at around 9:30 p.m. The armed group of men told his wife and his children to leave the house and then proceeded to ransack the house before setting it on fire.
It was the third act of arson in the past week after the Pidie residences of the chairmen of local Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle (PDI Perjuangan) and the National Mandate Party (PAN) were torched by unknown groups. There were no fatalities in the arson attacks. (50/emf)