In another village in East Acheh, residents said police and soldiers shot dead three civilians and critically wounded two others Tuesday during a search which followed an ambush on a patrol by suspected Free Acheh Movement (GAM) rebels.

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   In Pidie district, a civilian was shot dead in crossfire during a gunfight between a police and military convoy and suspected GAM rebels who had ambushed it, a local journalist said.

   On Tuesday afternoon, the tortured body of a 15 year old boy was brought by Red Cross officials to a hospital in Lhokseumawe in North Acheh, hospital staff told AFP. They said his left hand had been chopped off.

   And in North Acheh's Tanah Pasir district, a soldier who was stabbed in the head by two suspected Free Acheh Movement (GAM) rebels, shot dead one of his assailants. The soldier himself was in a critical condition, a North Acheh police spokesman said.

   On Monday a soldier and three workers were killed in a gunfight between security forces and members of the separatist Free Acheh Movement (GAM) in a palmoil plantation in North Acheh, police chief Wanto Sumardi said.

   The shootout followed a sudden rebel attack, he said.

   However GAM spokesman Sofyan Daud said all four of the dead were military personnel.

   "They were wearing military fatigues and were armed with rifles," Daud told AFP.

   Also on Monday, two rebels were killed when they tried to attack a military truck travelling in the Peudada area of Acheh, the police chief said, while GAM said that security forces killed one rebel and a civilian in the Jeunib area.

   A humanitarian worker in Jeunib said the body of a soldier was found with torture and gunshot wounds on Monday.

   At least 37 people, including security personnel, have died in the resource-rich province, on the northern tip of Sumatra island, since the government announced a new campaign to quell GAM last week.

   The operation allows troop reinforcements to be sent to the region, where GAM has waged a guerrilla war against Indonesian rule since the mid-1970s.

   The government and the rebels have agreed on a series of truces in Acheh but have so far failed to curtail violence which has claimed about 400 lives this year alone.