JAKARTA -- Indonesian police have shot dead the military head of Aceh's separatist rebels in a gunbattle in the troubled province, officials said on Wednesday.

"It is true," Agus Dwiyanto, the Aceh police spokesman, told Reuters when asked whether Abdullah Syafei had been killed in the clashes on the northern tip of Sumatra island.

A hospital official in the Aceh's Sigli region, about 1,600 km (990 miles) northwest of Jakarta, told Reuters Syafei had been shot in the chest and brought in together with six other people who also died of their wounds.

"They were all brought into the hospital yesterday," the hospital official said.

Syafei led the pro-independence Free Aceh Movement that has been fighting Jakarta's rule for decades in the resource-rich province. The conflict claims innocent lives almost daily and around 1,500 people were killed last year alone.