Posted on 04/29/2002 5:30:28 AM PDT by Mom_Grandmother
14 Christians Killed in Indonesia
Sun Apr 28, 2:06 PM ET
By MICHAEL CASEY, Associated Press Writer
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.
The Understatement for today.
FMCDH
Agreed. And we need to reconsider visa allocation. The Muslims in this country only come out in the streets when it's about the Palestinians, not when its about their fellow Americans.
Nahhhhh, I doubt it.
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