As of Monday, June 16, more than 15,000 residents from 13 villages in the Jeuli area were living in tents on a soccer field after the military on Friday, June 13, forced them to leave their homes, Agence France-Presse (AFP) quoted local reporters as saying.

At least 100 tents - each big enough to house up to 100 people - had been erected since Friday, local residents said.

More than 700 refugees, mostly women and children, are suffering from acute respiratory illnesses, influenza or skin problems, a health worker at the camp in Cot Gapu village told reporters.

Mariyati, a 34-year-old mother of four living at the camp in the rebel-dominated Bireuen district, said she had not eaten rice since Friday.

"We did not eat since the first day we came. The rice that was distributed was only enough for children," she was quoted as saying in Monday's Koran Tempo newspaper.

Several thousand villagers were forced to leave there homes as the troops continue chasing GAM fighters, whose number is estimated at 5,000, so as not to be caught in the military operations.

"Soldiers had carried out forced evacuations to prevent villagers from becoming victims of skirmishes" said Aceh military operations spokesman Lieutenant Colonel Yani Basuki.

Some other refugees at the camp are suffering from a lack of clean water and sanitation problems, the Jakarta Post said.

"Many here don't bathe any more," Mustafa Dadih, a 58-year-old schoolteacher, was quoted as saying. "We have problems washing in the morning because there isn't enough water."

As of Sunday, June 15, some 41,855 refugees were living in 16 tented camps across the province, another military operations spokesman, Lieutenant Colonel Ditya Sudarsono, told reporters in Banda Aceh Monday.

An official with the social affairs ministry, Rinto, told AFP that the second largest group of around 10,200 refugees could be found in South Aceh district.

Meanwhile, the Indonesian Red Cross said it had recovered 176 bodies in civilian clothes since the country's largest military operation for a quarter-century began.

"We do not know and do not make the distinction as to whether the victims are civilians or (guerrilla) combatants," said M.A. Ria Ison, spokesman for the Red Cross in Aceh.

He said the Red Cross' duty was only to take bodies to the nearest morgue.

"But so far we have not taken the body of a soldier or a policeman since the military and the police have their own medical team and conduct their own evacuation," he told AFP in Jakarta.

Army chief General Ryamizard Ryacudu told some 200 officers in Banda Aceh the operation was on target, with more than 200 fighters already killed.

The military says more than 300 others have surrendered or been arrested out of an estimated total strength of some 5,000.

Some 40,000 troops and police are involved in the operation to crush GAM fighters who have been fighting for independence since 1976.