But the circumstances of the violence remained unclear with witnesses and the military giving the Aceh daily Serambi two different versions of what happened in Lamtamot, in the Aceh Besar district late Saturday night.

Witnesses said soldiers fired on a crowd that was marching to attend a rally held by the Free Aceh separatist movement. However, the military said, the clashes took place when a crowd of 50 people conducting road checks on passing vehicles stumbled on a car carrying six soldiers. A dispute ensued and one of the soldiers was slashed by machete by the crowd. The other soldiers opened fire in self defence, Serambi said, quoting Banda Aceh military commander Lieutenant Colonel Ferdinan. The dead and the injured all had gunshot wounds, it added.

In another town, Meulaboh in West Aceh, the body of another man was found with a gunshot wound on the side of a bridge on Saturday. He had gone missing with nine other men on Wednesday, Serambi said. Thousands of people gathered at the main mosque in Meulaboh on Saturday to protest and seek information from the military about the other missing civilians. District commander Lieutenant Colonel Widhagdo, addressing the crowd, said only three of the missing had been detained by the security forces and the whereabouts of the seven others was unknown.

Aceh has been wracked by violence involving Indonesian security forces and separatist rebels and their supporters. The lifting of a harsh decade of anti-rebel military operations in the province in August last year failed to stem the violence and more than 300 people are believed to have died since. The Muslim province is home to the Free Aceh Movement which has been fighting for an Islamic state there since the mid 1970s.

It has called on the government to decide by December 4, the 23rd anniversary of its founding, whether to hold a referendum on self-determination in the province.

Indonesian President Abdurrahman Wahid on Sunday repeated to fellow Southeast Asian leaders that any referendum in Aceh would not include a vote for independence.