Aceh terror warning baffles officials

The Indonesian military and the top UN official in tsunami-hit Aceh province said they had no information of a specific threat to aid workers despite a warning from Denmark today of an ”imminent terror attack”.

“I have not received any information of a specific threat,” said Joel Boutroue, head of the UN relief effort in Aceh.

Boutroue said he held an unrelated security meeting earlier in the day and that the level of alert was unchanged.

“It’s an environment where you have to move around cautiously,” he said, adding that the advice he continues to give to aid workers is to “show great caution in their movement”.

In Jakarta, an Indonesian military spokesman, Colonel Ahmad Yani, said that officials did not know what information the Danish warning was based on.

“I have not heard about this kind of terror attack, and I do not know what kind of information that terror warning in Aceh comes from,” he said.

The comments came shortly after the Danish Foreign Ministry issued a warning to Danes of an “imminent terror attack on foreign relief workers”.

“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,” said Niels-Erik Andersen, of the Foreign Ministry’s security section,.

“Countries gauge such warnings differently,” he added, declining to name any of the other countries that also had received the warning. “I know about other countries that take this seriously.”

Andersen declined to elaborate on what prompted the warning or what kind of threat was made against aid workers in the region, but said all Danes in the region should try to find shelter and be alert and mindful of their surroundings.