Posted on 05/29/2005 7:03:54 PM PDT by Cornpone
TENTENA/JAKARTA (Reuters) - Twin bomb blasts that killed 22 people in a Christian town in eastern Indonesia bore the hallmarks of a regional militant group linked to al Qaeda, the vice president and a senior police official said on Sunday.
Some 50 people were wounded in the blasts on Saturday which ripped through a busy market in the lakeside town of Tentena on the eastern island of Sulawesi, the worst bombings in Indonesia since the 2002 Bali attacks that killed 202 people.
Tentena is part of an area where 2,000 people were killed in three years of Muslim-Christian fighting until a peace deal was agreed in late 2001.
Vice President Jusuf Kalla said the bombings were similar to those carried out by Jemaah Islamiah, a shadowy militant group seen as the regional arm of al Qaeda.
He singled out Malaysian Noordin M. Top, one of the most wanted men in the region and a key Jemaah Islamiah operative.
"The pattern is at least like that carried out by Noordin M. Top," Kalla told reporters in Jakarta, without giving details.
Top and another fugitive Malaysian and senior Jemaah Islamiah member, bombmaker Azahari bin Husin, are accused of masterminding a spate of blasts in Indonesia including the 2002 attacks on the resort island of Bali.
A senior police official in Jakarta, asked if the Tentena attacks resembled previous bombings blamed on Jemaah Islamiah, said: "There are similarities, based on the analysis of the anti-terror team." He did not elaborate.
Nearby Poso was the focus of much of the past Sulawesi violence, which drew militants from groups like Jemaah Islamiah.
There has been some violence since the peace deal but Saturday's bombings, less than 15 minutes apart, were among the worst cases and raised fears sectarian strife would reignite.
TENSION REMAINS
Tentena was tense on Sunday, but local community leaders were trying to keep a lid on passions, residents said.
Some 85 percent of Indonesia's 220 million people are Muslim. But in some eastern parts, Christian and Muslim populations are about equal in size.
Chief security minister Widodo Adi Sutjipto told reporters after a ministerial crisis meeting in Jakarta that the government would step up intelligence operations.
Saturday's blasts follow Western government warnings about terrorist attacks in the world's most populous Muslim nation.
On Thursday, the United States closed all of its four diplomatic missions in Indonesia because of a security threat, hough no officials have linked the Tentena attacks and the mission closures.
President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono said he would cut short an overseas trip and return home if authorities could not deal with the situation, the official Antara news agency reported.
Yudhoyono was speaking on Saturday night after arriving in Hanoi following a visit to the United States. From Vietnam, the former general will travel to Japan.
One of the aims of his trip is to convince foreign investors that Indonesia is a safe and easier place to do business, after years of ineffective government and occasional major bombings by Jemaah Islamiah.
The Moluccas islands, to the east of the Poso region, were also the scene of vicious communal fighting between Muslims and Christians from 1999 to 2002 that left more than 5,000 dead. A peace agreement was reached there in early 2002.
Is this Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono one of Mobutu Sese Seko Kuku Ngbeandu Wa Za Banga's cousins, or what?
Yeah...or maybe something like that...or maybe not...or yet maybe so...ask an Imam...I can't figure it out...
You guys are xenophobic yahoos. Bambang Susilo Yudhoyono is a good guy and probably the best thing that has happened in Indonesia in the past 10 years.
Mocking him for is name is puerile.
That was one of the best things to ever happen to Congo.
So, this guy is OK?
'SBY,' as he is known in Indonesia was attacked viciously during the election campaign as a CIA puppet and American tool, probably based on his years in the US and his US military training.
In spite of this, or perhaps because of it, he was overwhelmingly elected over the former President and former childhood pal of Kim Jong-Il, Megawati Sukarnoputri.
Interestingly, as soon as Megawati was ousted, she made a visit to North Korea to see her ol' buddy. You won't see SBY chumming it up with the butchers of Pyongyang.
Gee, according to post #4 it's you guys who are the ignorant misanthropes, not the bloodthirsty satan worshippers who are sacrificing Christians to the moon demon.
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