MSN.News, 29/5/2005 11:31:58 AM
Indonesia bombing has Qaeda "similarities" - police
By Telly Nathalia
JAKARTA (Reuters) - A senior police official said on Sunday the twin blasts that killed
22 people in a Christian town in eastern Indonesia bore the hallmarks of a militant
group linked to al Qaeda.
"There are similarities, based on the analysis of the anti-terror team," the official told
Reuters when asked whether Saturday's attacks resembled previous bombings
blamed on Jemaah Islamiah, a militant group linked to al Qaeda.
The officer, who declined to be named, did not elaborate.
More than 30 people were wounded in the blasts which ripped through a busy market
in the lakeside town of Tentena, on the eastern island of Sulawesi. The town is part of
a region where three years of Muslim-Christian fighting killed 2,000 people until a
peace deal was agreed in late 2001.
Some 85 percent of Indonesia's 220 million people are Muslim. But in some eastern
parts, Christian and Muslim populations are about equal in size.
Much of the past Sulawesi violence focused on nearby Poso in a conflict that drew
Muslim militants from groups such as the al Qaeda-linked Jemaah Islamiah, a
Southeast Asian network blamed for numerous bomb attacks across Indonesia.
Periodic unrest has flared since the peace deal, but Saturday's bombings, which
occurred within 15 minutes of each other, were among the worst and raises fears
sectarian strife will reignite.
SECURITY INCREASE
Chief security minister Widodo Adi Sutjipto told reporters after a ministerial crisis
meeting that the government would step up intelligence operations.
"There must be significant steps taken to uncover this terror network, including by
seeking more information from captured perpetrators," Widodo said, referring to
detainees held over past attacks.
He added the government would step up security in other parts of the country.
Military chief Endriartono Sutarto also stressed the need to boost intelligence
gathering, adding officials had received indications of a possible fresh attack about
two weeks earlier.
Saturday's blasts follow Western government warnings about terrorist attacks in the
world's most populous Muslim nation.
On Thursday, the United States closed all of its four diplomatic missions in Indonesia
because of a security threat.
Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono said he would not speculate on
who carried out the attacks in Tentena.
"I have spoken to the vice president and the chief security minister. If this problem
cannot be dealt with, I will return to the country," Yudhoyono was quoted as saying by
the official Antara news agency after arriving in Hanoi late on Saturday.
"I have instructed the authorities to catch the perpetrators."
Yudhoyono had just touched down after visiting the United States. From Vietnam, the
former general will travel to Japan.
One of the aims of his trip is to convince foreign investors that Indonesia is a safe and
easier place to do business, after years of ineffective government and occasional
major bombings by Jemaah Islamiah.
Attacks against Western targets and blamed on Jemaah Islamiah include blasts at
Bali nightclubs in October 2002 that killed 202 people, mostly foreigners, and one last
September outside the Australian embassy in Jakarta that killed 10.
Besides the Poso region, the Moluccas islands further to the east were also the
scene of vicious communal fighting between Muslims and Christians from 1999 to
2002 that left more than 5,000 dead. A peace agreement was reached there in early
2002.
( Source: Reuters)
© 2005 Microsoft and its suppliers. All rights reserved.
|
