REUTERS, Saturday March 3, 1:14 PM
Bomb injures 14 in Indonesia's Ambon island
JAKARTA (Reuters) - A small homemade bomb filled with nails exploded at a port in
Indonesia's Ambon island on Saturday injuring 14 people, police said.
The blast occurred soon after passengers disembarked from a ship that had just
arrived in Ambon, part of the Moluccas islands, from Sulawesi island,
Most of the injured were street vendors and motorbike drivers while three of them were
passengers, Moluccas police spokesman Tommi Napitupulu told Reuters.
"Our initial investigation shows it was a low explosion, but the components of the
piece show it had high potential for wounding. It contained small iron nails of about 2
cm (1 inch) each," Napitupulu said.
The Moluccas islands, 2,300 km east of Jakarta, saw vicious fighting between
Muslims and Christians from 1999 to 2002 that killed more than 5,000.
The conflict also drew Muslim militants from groups such as the al Qaeda-linked
Jemaah Islamiah, a Southeast Asian network blamed for a series of bomb attacks
across Indonesia.
Since a 2002 truce between Muslim and Christian communities, sectarian violence
has largely subsided on the islands.
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