USA TODAY, Sunday, April 28, 2002 - Updated 01:02 AM ET
Indonesian mob kills 12 Christians
JAKARTA, Indonesia (AP) — A mob stabbed and burned to death 12 Christians in the
religiously divided capital of Indonesia's Maluku province Sunday, witnesses said, in
the worst violence since a fragile peace was forged earlier this year.
About a dozen people wearing military fatigues and black masks attacked mainly
Christian Soya village on Ambon's outskirts, setting 30 homes and a Protestant
church ablaze, a witness said.
The assailants stabbed six Christians to death, including a 6-month-old baby. Six
others were killed in the fires. Witnesses said it was unclear if the attackers were
Muslims.
The killings threatened to destroy a peace pact signed in February between warring
Christians and Muslims. Three years of bloodshed left at least 9,000 dead.
The killings came two days after the commander of a militant Muslim group rejected
the peace deal.
"The scene is horrible," said the witnesses, who arrived at the scene Sunday morning,
on condition of anonymity. "I saw six bodies burned so badly you couldn't recognize
them."
He said police were continuing to search the burned homes for more bodies. Police
declined to comment on the attack or who might be behind it.
Tensions have run high in Ambon since the mostly Christian Maluku Sovereignty
Front celebrated the 52nd anniversary of a failed independence bid Thursday. The
group flew its independence flags angering Muslims who responded by burning down
a partially rebuilt church.
Jafar Umar Thalib, the commander of the Islamic militant group Laskar Jihad,
responded to the independence bid by urging his followers on Friday to ignore the
peace deal.
The group — which is believed to have shrunk to a few hundred men — shares Osama
bin Laden's anti-Western stance, but Thalib has denied any links to international
terror.
Earlier this month, a bomb killed seven bystanders in a Christian part Ambon. It was
the first major violation of the peace agreement.
Maluku province is about 1,600 miles east of Jakarta.
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