CNN, Wednesday, April 28, 2004 Posted: 0508 GMT (1308 HKT)
Violence dogs Indonesian city
[PHOTO: Indonesian policemen patrol the streets of Ambon.]
AMBON, Indonesia -- Sporadic violence is continuing in the troubled Maluku Islands
region of Indonesia with reports of fresh gunfire and bomb blasts in the capital city
Ambon.
Shortly after dawn, unidentified assailants launched attacks in several districts of
Ambon with the heaviest fighting in areas that straddle the avenues between the
Muslim and Christian communities.
Plumes of smokes could be seen rising from at least two locations, and gunfire from
snipers positioned atop buildings rang out across the divided city for several hours,
The Associated Press reported.
One person was killed and 13 wounded as the battling factions clashed for a fourth
straight day.
Fears are now growing that the latest sectarian clashes, which flared up on Sunday,
will dog the region until the republic's presidential elections, scheduled for July.
As many as 31 people have been killed in the violence between Christian and Muslim
groups and up to 150 injured.
The clashes are the worst since Christians and Muslims -- who live in separate
communities --signed a government sponsored peace pact in 2002.
Despite calls for calm from political and religious leaders, and an influx of hundreds of
extra troops and paramilitary police, snipers are continuing to terrorize Ambon.
The gunmen killed two police officers and critically wounded a third on Tuesday, while
a Muslim man later was incinerated by a bomb explosion.
"I'm telling Christians to stay indoors and don't be provoked," Ambon's Roman
Catholic bishop, Petur Canis Mandagi, told The Associated Press after talks with
Muslim leaders and security chiefs at police headquarters.
"The conflict can be stopped, but we must be quick."
Muslim men armed with machetes and sharpened sticks gathered outside the main
mosque Tuesday, chanting "God is great" and calling for holy war against Christian
separatists.
Mobs put up barricades between the Muslim and Christian parts of Ambon.
A former commander of the Laskar Jihad (Holy War Legion), Ja`far Umar Thalib, said
he was ready to send men to Ambon to "defend the integrity of the unitary state of
Indonesia" if security forces were unable to quell the riots.
"If police and military forces are unable (to quell it) while people in Ambon are
helpless, we are ready to come there to help the government defend the country,"
Indonesia's official Antara news service quotes Ja`far saying.
The Malukus are 2,600 kilometers (1,600 miles) east of Jakarta. Known as the Spice
Islands during Dutch colonial days, the islands were once held up as a model of
religious harmony.
But nearly 10,000 people have died in Muslim-Christian conflict there since 1999.
The conflict intensified after 1999 with the arrival of volunteers belonging to Laskar
Jihad -- a newly created militia from Indonesia's main island of Java.
Indonesia is predominantly Muslim, but the Malukus' two million people are evenly
divided between Muslims and Christians.
Most of the Muslims are settlers who were moved to the Malukus from other densely
populated islands in the 1970s and 80s under the Suharto dictatorship's migration
program to dilute the secessionist movement.
© 2004 Cable News Network LP, LLLP.
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