`Witnesses report three mass graves'

`Witnesses report three mass graves'

Agence France-Presse, Jakarta

Witnesses have told Indonesian national human rights investigators about three separate mass graves in Indonesia's Aceh province, an investigator said Tuesday.

"We have several reports from eyewitnesses who said they saw several graves that aren't normal," M.M. Billah told AFP in Jakarta.

Billah had led a team from the Indonesian National Commission on Human Rights (Komnas HAM) to the province to follow up a report from its field representatives.

Troops are in their second month of an all-out offensive against separatist rebels of the Free Aceh Movement (GAM). Billah said the graves were in the Bireuen-North Aceh area, the scene of intense activity during the operation.

About seven or eight bodies are located in a former reservoir, he said, citing eyewitness reports.

"They saw for themselves there are bodies there," he said.

At another location about eight corpses are believed to be inside a well, Billah said.

The third site is in a forest where people collecting wood spotted bodies but were too afraid to collect them, he said after interviewing witnesses in the area.

Komnas HAM says it does not know who carried out the killings or when. Billah said his team hopes to visit the grave sites next week.

Billah did not want to specify the exact location "because we are afraid they will be opened like the ones in Central Aceh."

The Indonesian military was quoted on three separate occasions last week as saying soldiers were examining three other mass graves in Central, West and South Aceh.

They blamed GAM for the killings, a charge the rebels denied.

A newspaper photograph on Saturday showed soldiers helping to excavate the Central Aceh grave.

Billah said graves should only be excavated by police accompanied by experts.

Lt. Col. Yani Basuki, spokesman for the Aceh military operation, was quoted in Monday's Jakarta Post as saying the military did not initiate the excavations. Soldiers were simply helping villagers with the work, he said.