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 he separatist Free Acheh Movement (GAM) rebels have called a two-day strike from Wednesday to protest alleged brutality by police and troops and Jakarta's plan to revive a separate military command for the province.
In provincial capital Banda Acheh, and the districts of North Acheh, Pidie and South Acheh, shops were closed, schools were abandoned and no public transport was running, witnesses said.
In Banda Acheh a massive explosion was heard early morning near the closed Syah Kuala university campus, but there was no further information available.
Soldiers were out patrolling the streets in Banda Acheh and police were driving around in cars urging residents through loudspeakers to get down to business as usual. But despite their efforts, the city remained largely deserted.
Several policemen were also seen driving public buses carrying government officials, a local journalist said.
The violence which has wracked the province for decades continued unabated Wednesday with the discovery of more bodies.
A journalist in Lhokseumawe, the capital of North Acheh where Exxon-Mobil's key gas and oil operations are based, reported hearing 15 explosions since nightfall Tuesday, and volleys of gunfire before dawn.
In North Acheh, three bodies, two of them bearing gunshot wounds, were found in two separate locations, a humanitarian activist said.
A humanitarian activist said two male corpses bearing gunshot wounds and torture marks were evacuated by humanitarian workers in Tanggoi of North Acheh Wednesday morning.
One unidentified male body was also found in the Batu Phat area near Lhokseumawe, the main town in North Acheh, the activist told AFP.
A gunfight broke out between soldiers and suspected GAM rebels after gunmen ambushed a military patrol in Pidie district, a military spokesman said. Two gunmen were killed and two soldiers injured.
Elsewhere in Pidie two unidentified bodies with gunshot wounds were delivered to the Sigli hospital. They had been brought in by volunteer workers from the Salawak mountain area, a paramedic said.
In East Acheh on Wednesday, humanitarian workers discovered two unidentified bodies with massive head wounds and torture marks in Perlak area. Humanitarian activists said that the body of her younger brother, 44, was found on later Wednesday in the same district but at a different location.
Soldiers are under shoot-on-sight orders to foil any rebel attempts to block roads and disrupt public transport during the strike.
In the Tualang Cut area of East Acheh dozens of coconut trees were felled on the streets by GAM rebels on Tuesday night, a local journalist said.
Two suspected GAM rebels were killed and two soldiers injured in ambush on a military patrol in Pidie district, a military spokesman said.
Elsewhere in Pidie two corpses with gunshot wounds were found in the Salawak mountain area, a paramedic said.
It coincides with a one-day visit by Vice President Hamzah Haz to the resource-rich province on the northwest tip of Sumatra island, where he is due
to visit the southwest island of Simeuleu and the southern district of Singkil. He is expected to lay a foundation stone for the construction of a public hospital on Simeuleu, home to 70,000 people, and will later open a seminar on a late Achenese intellectual in Singkil.
Jakarta last year granted Acheh greater self-rule and a larger share of oil and gas revenues. It also allowed the staunchly Muslim region to implement Islamic law.
In Jakarta, seven leading rights and democracy activisits urged President Megawati Sukarnoputri to firmly reject the plan to revive the military command in Acheh.
The revival of the command, disbanded in 1985 during the rule of former president Suharto, "points to the reality that there is one policy that is not changing, that is that the military is a factor of the old political powers which continue to be accommodated by all post-Suharto regimes," a joint statement signed by the seven said.
"Democratisation in Indonesia should dare to aim at reducing or eliminating all military institutions and influence in the civilian political sphere." Peace in Acheh, they said could only be pioneered through the implementation of justice and accountability.
But President Megawati Sukarnoputri, a daughter of the country's founding president Sukarno, has vowed it will never win independence.
More than 1,700 people died in 2001 in skirmishes between rebels and security troops, and 86 have already been killed this year.
© 2002 Agence France-Presse. All rights reserved.
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