Indonesia Matters, March 3rd, 2007
The Ambon bomb blast which injured 14 people and who was
behind it
Wawan Purwanto
A bomb packed with nails exploded at the port of Ambon city today, wounding 14
people. The explosion rocked the Yos Sudarso port as passengers were
disembarking from a ship, sending nails and other shrapnel into a crowd of motorbike
taxi drivers waiting to collect customers, said Ambon police chief Senior Commander
Trilulus Rahardjo.
The policeman said the presence of shrapnel confirmed the blast came from a bomb,
but investigators were still unsure whether the device was hurled into the crowd or
placed somewhere beforehand. Local residents said the explosion was heard two
kilometres away.
While Trilulus declined to speculate on who might be responsible for the attack at the
port, which is of course frequented by both Muslims and Christians, intelligence
expert Wawan Purwanto said in Jakarta that the bombing was the first of a series of
"test cases" by militant groups supported by foreigners. 2007 would see more
examples of such small-scale "test case" bombings and by 2008 a full-scale bombing
campaign would be underway, in Ambon, Poso, Papua, Medan, Jakarta, and a
number of towns in Central Java.
All such bombings, said the expert, were part of foreign plots to destablise Indonesia
in order to weaken the government.
Of the current bombing in Ambon Wawan, a senior lecturer at the Indonesian
Intelligence School (Intitut Intelijen Negara (IIN)), said the police should focus their
investigations on remaining members of the separatist Republic of South Maluku
movement (Republik Maluku Selatan (RMS)).
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