Relief workers warned of terror threat in tsunami area
UN security officials declared a state of heightened awareness for relief workers in Indonesia today pending investigation of an “imminent terrorist attack” warning issued by the Danish Foreign Ministry.
It also banned its staff from travelling between Banda Aceh and Medan because of reported fighting between Indonesian military and separatist rebels in the tsunami-battered area.
Mans Nyberg, a spokesman for the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, said the ban would be effective overnight. It takes about 12 hours to drive the 280 miles stretch of road.
“This is strictly because of the fighting going on down there. There was reportedly a small battle between the army and GAM (rebels) somewhere along the road,” Nyberg said.
Christian Berthiaume, spokeswoman for the UN’s World Food Programme, said a state of heightened awareness had been declared although officials had yet to receive confirmed reports of a possible terrorist attack against its staff of other humanitarian operations in Aceh Province.
But she said WFP and UN officials were investigating the source of the Danish warning of an “imminent terror attack.”
Indonesia’s military and the UN said they had no information of a specific threat to aid workers in Aceh province despite the Danish warning.
And an Aceh rebel commander said today they would not attack foreign aid workers because the relief groups were caring for the militants’ families.
“Our mothers, our wives, our children are victims from this tragedy,” said Tengku Mucksalmina from a hideout on the edge of a jungle about a two-hour drive outside Banda Aceh, the provincial capital of Aceh.
“We would never ambush any convoy with aid for them. We want them to stay. We ask them not to leave the Acehnese people who are suffering,” Mucksalmina said.
In Copenhagen, Niels-Erik Andersen of the Foreign Ministry’s security section, said, “several countries had received this warning, and we in Denmark have decided that the source and the content of the warning were sufficient to go out with it.”
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