US teachers shot at in Indonesia

Jordan News.Net
Monday 23rd November, 2009

In the latest in a string of attacks directed against foreigners in Indonesia, gunmen have fired at the home of two US academics in the Indonesian province of Aceh, which is on the nothern tip of Sumatra.

The home of the female teachers in the provincial capital of Banda Aceh was fired upon, with one of them confirming she heard about six shots.

The two have been in Aceh to teach English to local students at an Acehnese university.

Police in the area have said they have received no further information on the attack and it
was not clear whether there was a connection to a recent spate of shootings targeting Westerners in the province.

Only a week ago, a motorcycle-riding gunmen fired on the home of an Englishman, who is the European Union's local representative in the province.

The representative of the German branch of the Red Cross was badly wounded in a shooting attack earlier this month.

The Red Cross left the province soon after.

The strongly Islamic Islamic province is home to a large, but steadily declining, number of international organisations, which arrived to help after the 2004 Asian tsunami killed 168,000 people in Aceh.

Aceh is a part of Indonesia in which a bitter separatist war was fought.

The three decade war ended in 2005 after claiming around 15,000 lives.

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