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Southeast Asia
Red Thingy Cross worker shot and wounded in Aceh
2005-06-24
BANDA ACEH, Indonesia - Shots fired at a Red Thingy Cross vehicle in Indonesia's tsunami-struck Aceh province wounded a Chinese woman, the group said on Thursday, in the first serious attack on an aid worker since last December's disaster.

The circumstances of the shooting were not immediately clear to the clueless reporter, but police blamed separatist rebels for the attack - a claim immediately denied by the insurgents, who have been fighting since 1976 for an independent state in Aceh.
"Lies! All lies!"
Two shots were fired at the vehicle near the west coast town of Lamno on Wednesday evening, said Virgil Grandfield, a spokesman for the International Federation of Red Thingy Cross and Red Moon-shaped Thingy Crescent Societies. Eva Yeung, a 28-year-old resident of Hong Kong, was shot in the neck and is in a stable condition. She was flown to Singapore late Thursday for treatment. Three other people in the car were unharmed, he said.

It is the first time since the Dec. 26 tsunami that a foreign aid worker has been the victim of serious violence in the province, which is home to a separatist war that has killed some 12,000 people since 1976. Clashes between the rebels and government troops have continued since the tsunami, but have been less frequent than before the disaster. "We don't know if she was shot in a cross fire incident, or by the military, guerrillas or bandits," said Grandfield. "It is not clear."
Hey! Can't be a cross-fire unless the RAB's in town!
A Red Thingy Cross security delegate was investigating the incident.

Police spokesman Djoko Turochman accused the rebels of shooting the rebels, but gave no details to back up the claim. The insurgents have welcomed international aid groups to the province, and have never targeted foreigners before.

Rebel spokesman Sofyan Dawood said he had no reports of any clashes between insurgents and army troops in Lamno district on Wednesday night. "We have heard of this shooting, but if anyone accuses GAM of carrying it out we deny it," he said by cell phone from an undisclosed location in the province. GAM is the Indonesian acronym of the Free Aceh Movement.

Both sides have pledged to avoid targeting the thousands of international aid workers that have flocked to the region since the tsunami, which killed more than 130,000 people in Aceh. Relief agencies have said that the ongoing conflict has not affected their work there.

Since the tsunami, government and rebel negotiators have met three times in Finland to seek a peace deal in the province. The government has said it hopes to sign a deal by August.
Posted by:Steve White

#1  Hope they weren't wearing the Thingy. It tends to set the natives off.
Posted by: BH   2005-06-24 09:54  

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