CNN, April 29, 2002 Posted: 5:46 AM HKT (2146 GMT)
Fourteen killed in Indonesia's Maluku province
JAKARTA, Indonesia (AP) -- Black-masked assailants armed with guns, grenades
and daggers stormed a village in Indonesia's religiously divided Maluku province
Sunday, killing 14 Christians in a brutal pre-dawn attack that threatened a fragile
peace pact.
Shouting "kill them all," a dozen men entered the mostly Christian village of Soya on
the outskirts of Ambon, the provincial capital and the focus of three years of sectarian
violence that killed 9,000 people, witnesses said.
The attackers went from house to house, shooting residents and setting fire to 30
homes and a Protestant church, witnesses said. They said six people were stabbed
to death, including a 6-month-old child, six died in fires and two were believed to have
been shot.
"The scene is horrible," one witness said on condition of anonymity. "I saw six bodies
burned so badly you couldn't recognize them."
The attack came two days after a militant Islamic group, Laskar Jihad, rejected a
February peace deal meant to end the fighting between Muslims and Christians in
Maluku, a region known as the Spice Islands during Dutch colonial rule.
"It may be the end of the peace deal," said Cornelius Bohm, a Christian pastor in
Ambon who said he had "no doubt" that Laskar Jihad was behind the attack. The
group could not be reached for comment Sunday.
A senior police officer in Ambon, speaking on condition of anonymity, said 14 people
were killed and 11 injured, while national Police Chief Gen. Da'i Bactiar put the death
toll at eight. Both officers refused to speculate on the religion of the killers.
Survivors said they initially thought the camouflage-clad intruders were soldiers
carrying out a security sweep but that the assailants then started tossing grenades
and shooting at anyone who moved. Those interviewed described the attackers as
"terrorists" and said they were unsure if they were Muslim.
Some witnesses raised the possibility the military may have been involved, saying the
attackers were well-trained, armed with M-16s and wearing military fatigues. Officials
vehemently rejected the suggestion.
Security was tight Sunday as police and army troops searched for the attackers.
Troops put up roadblocks in Ambon and enforced a nighttime curfew to prevent further
outbreaks of religious violence.
Security officers in Ambon fired warning shots to disperse a crowd of about a dozen
Muslims who had gathered after seeing several banned flags of a mostly Christian
separatist group, the Maluku Sovereignty Front, being flown. No one was injured.
Tension has run high in Ambon since the Front celebrated the 52nd anniversary of a
failed independence bid Thursday, flying its banned flags. Muslims burned down a
partially rebuilt church and threatened to resume attacks on Christians.
Hundreds of thousands of people fled their homes in three years of combat in Maluku,
1,600 miles northeast of Jakarta. Ambon was devastated by the fighting, and its two
communities now are divided by a strip of no man's land.
The violence peaked in mid-2000, when thousands of Muslim fighters belonging to
Laskar Jihad arrived from Java, Indonesia's main island, where the group is based.
Former President Abdurrahman Wahid claimed the conflict was sparked by hard-line
generals opposed to civilian rule after decades of dictatorship.
The fighting decreased sharply after Megawati Sukarnoputri, who enjoys the backing
of Indonesia's powerful military, replaced Wahid.
Several parts of the sprawling Indonesian archipelago have been racked by separatist,
ethnic and religious violence for years.
About 85 percent of the country's 210 million people are Muslims, but Muslims and
Christians are split almost evenly in the Malukus.
© 2001 Cable News Network LP, LLLP
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