REUTERS, Thu Feb 15, 11:29 PM ET
Indonesia province on alert after attack warnings
Security forces have been on highest alert in Indonesia's restive Central Sulawesi
province following warnings militants may be planning attacks, the region's police
chief said on Friday.
The Australian government said earlier on Friday it had credible information militants
may be in advanced stages of planning attacks in Central Sulawesi, the scene of
tension between Muslims and Christians.
"We have been on alert level 1 since last month when there were warnings of a shift in
(militant) operations from Java to Central Sulawesi," provincial police chief Badrotin
Haiti told Reuters.
Indonesia, the world's most populous Muslim country, has in recent years been hit by
a series of bomb blasts blamed on Islamic militants.
Most attacks against Western targets have taken place in the capital, Jakarta, and on
Bali, where a total of 92 Australians died in two separate bombings in 2002 and 2005.
Haiti said security forces had also intensified a search for illegal weapons in Poso, a
provincial region beset by Muslim-Christian fighting.
More than 2,000 people from both religious communities were killed in three years of
fighting before a peace pact was signed in 2001, but sporadic attacks mainly targeting
Christians have continued since then.
Australia advised its citizens to avoid all government buildings and infrastructure in
Central Sulawesi.
"Recent credible reports indicate that terrorists may be in the advance stages of
planning attacks in Sulawesi," Australia's Department of Foreign Affairs said.
Poso has been tense since the execution of three Christian militants in September
over their role in the massacres of Muslims at a boarding school in 2000.
In January, 14 people, one of them a policeman, were killed during raids that involved
gunfire between security forces and suspected Islamic activists linked to Southeast
Asia's main militant group Jemaah Islamiah.
Around 85 percent of Indonesia's 220 million people follow Islam, giving the country
the world's largest Muslim population. Most Indonesian Muslims are moderates but
there is a radical fringe that has been increasingly vocal and media-savvy.
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