REUTERS, Thursday June 6, 2002 5:44 AM ET
Bus Bomb Kills Four, Injures 15 in Indonesia
JAKARTA (Reuters) - A powerful bomb exploded in a crowded bus in Indonesia's
troubled region of Central Sulawesi killing four people and injuring more than a dozen,
police said on Thursday.
The explosion happened on Wednesday afternoon when the bus was traveling from
the Central Sulawesi capital of Palu to the lakeside town of Poso, about 60 miles
away.
Police are still investigating the blast -- the first major violence to hit the towns since a
peace pact was signed between feuding Christians and Muslims there last December.
"A bomb exploded from inside the bus as it was making its way toward Poso. Four
people died and 15 people were injured,"
Lieutenant-Colonel Unggung Cahyono told Reuters by telephone from Poso some 900
miles east of Jakarta.
A witness said he saw dismembered bodies being pulled from the bus, which was
carrying around 30 passengers and was almost gutted by the blast.
"They were no longer intact," the witness said.
More than 1,000 people have been killed in Central Sulawesi in three years of
bloodshed between the two religions.
A spate of bomb blasts hit churches in the provincial capital of Palu in January last
year, but there were no deaths.
Roughly equal numbers of Christians and Muslims live in Poso where festering social
and political resentments burst to the surface when autocrat Suharto fell from power in
1998, providing the spark for fighting.
About 85 percent of the country's 210 million people are Muslim.
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