The 30-year-old driver rammed a flat-bed truck backwards into the garden gate of a home where two of the cult leader's children live, injuring two people, police s aid.

It was the latest sign of fury against the doomsday sect which has survived and is even growing despite the Nazi-invented sarin nerve gas attack in Tokyo which killed 12 people and injured thousands.

The driver has been arrested, police said.

The former inn in Otawara is home to 15 disciples and two children of cult leader Shoko Asahara -- an 18-year-old daughter and a five-year-old son seen by followers as the sect's leading power.

Asahara himself is fighting 17 criminal charges including masterminding the March 1995 Tokyo subway attack.

Anger against the cult has been mounting as its members grow in number and move into often-hostilecommunities. Police have raided many of its properties and communities have launched protest rallies.

Last Friday, police swooped on 27 cult properties, including the home in Otawara, in connection with a suspect land purchase near the 1998 Winter Olympics city of Nagano.

On July 11, about 1,500 residents marched in and around Otawara shouting, ``We can't forgive Aum'' and ``Get out''.

On Wednesday, police conducted another raid at an Aum home in Furukawa, central Japan, a spokesman said, on suspicion of forging documents.

The Tokyo district of Adachi -- a popular haunt for cultists because it is the site of the detention centre holding Asahara -- on Monday decided to deny residency permits to anyone connected with the sect.

The government, while warning that local communities had no power to refuse residency in such cases, sympathised with concerned residents.

``I can understand actions taken by the heads of local communities because the Aum Supreme Truth is a group which has committed veryserious crimes,'' Chief Cabinet Secretary Hiromu Nonaka said at the time.

The cult ``has not acknowledged its wrongdoing as a group while the trial of its leader is not proceeding smoothly and the number of Aum followers is increasing in different places,'' Nonaka said.