Attacks on Christian villages force 13,000 to flee in Indonesia's Sulawesi

Armed Muslim groups have burnt down six Christian villages in Indonesia's Central Sulawesi province and forced some 13,000 people to flee.

The residents were evacuated to other villages or fled into the forest after Muslim groups attacked and razed the villages in the area around the town of Poso in Thursday, the Reverend Erna Makarensi told AFP from the provincial capital of Palu on Monday.

Reports have said at least seven people were killed in fighting over several days last week, including two of the attackers.

Four soldiers were wounded, two of them critically, during clashes between troops and the Muslim groups in the area on Saturday evening and early Sunday, a hospital nurse and police said.

"There were no security personnel in the area on the day of the attack and the evacuation was fully assisted by the churches," Makarensi said, adding that some 400 soldiers and police have since been deployed in the Poso area.

She said the villages of Betalemba, Patiwunga, Tangkura, Padalembara, Dewua and Sanginora had now been completely burnt down.

About 300 extra police -- including 200 from Jakarta -- were sent to the area on Friday and Saturday, a provincial police spokesman said.

Adjunct Senior Commissioner Agus Sugianto said the military sent two companies (about 200 men) from Gorontalo in North Sulawesi to Poso on Sunday.

A police officer at the Poso district office, Fa Aslin, said there had been no new clashes between troops and Muslim gangs since Sunday morning.

A nurse at the local hospital said one soldier was shot in the head and another in the stomach.

Poso has been the scene of almost two years of sectarian fighting between Muslims and Christians in which more than 300 people have died.

Michael Elmquist, deputy United Nations Humanitarian Coordinator, said Tuesday that a recent mission to the province had found an "extremely tense" situation, with a "depth of hatred" between Christians and Muslims.

He said up to 7,000 members of Laskar Jihad -- a Java-based armed Islamic group which has waged a "jihad" (holy war) against Christians in the Malukus -- had moved to Poso to continue their battle.

Reports from the Vatican quoted the Bishop of Manado in North Sulawesi, Joseph Suwatan, as saying that as many as 50,000 Christians had fled their homes. He could not immediately be reached for confirmation.

The Koran Tempo daily said that among the refugees were 1,300 Balinese settlers in the villages which were attacked. They were taken to Tolai, another Balinese settlement in the neighbouring district of Donggala.

SERIOUS Media bias on this story! View the AP version of the story below - you have to read it closely to find out its an invasion of Islamics since the title and most of the article indicate its just another fight between religious groups. Its an invasion, AP, of Muslim Jihad extremists, try reporting the facts for a change! Reuters just ignores the story as if Christians aren't being killed or fleeing the muslims anywhere in the world....

Sunday December 2 8:21 AM ET Indonesia Religious Violence Continues
Indonesia Religious Violence Continues

JAKARTA, Indonesia (AP) - Dozens of houses were torched and four soldiers were shot on Sunday in fresh fighting between Muslims and Christians on Indonesia's Sulawesi Island, witnesses and hospital officials said.
The clashes cap a week of sectarian violence on the island that has killed at least seven people and caused thousands to flee their homes.
Witnesses in the coastal town of Poso in central Sulawesi province reported hearing gunfire and explosions until dawn Sunday. A doctor at Poso's hospital said four soldiers were being treated for bullet wounds.
Fighting between Muslim and Christian villagers in Sulawesi, about 1,000 miles northeast of Jakarta, has killed at least 1,000 people in the last two years.
The recent violence has been blamed on the arrival of hundreds of fighters belonging to the Laskar Jihad, a paramilitary Muslim group accused of stoking a sectarian conflict in neighboring Maluku province. About 9,000 have died in Maluku since 1999.
The Laskar Jihad group is based on Indonesia's main island of Java.
Police said Sunday they had arrested 30 of its members and confiscated weapons, including a pistol, in the eastern Javanese town of Ngawi.
Police spokesman Maj. Peni Handayani said the group was believed to be preparing to attack local political activists, but he gave no further details.
In Indonesia's westernmost province of Aceh, security forces shot and killed two suspected rebels when they stormed a guerrilla base in the south of the region, military spokesman Lt. Col. Firdaus Komarno said. Three other rebels were killed Saturday in the same area.
Guerillas in the predominantly Muslim province have been fighting since 1975 for the independence of their gas- and oil-rich homeland. More than 6,000 people have died in the conflict.

If you actually believe what you are saying you either suffer from wishful thinking or are blind.

He was being satirical.

Apologists for the 9/11 attacks like to imply that the US brought the attacks on itself, and to forestall future attacks needs to "re-examine its foreign policy", as if our foreign policy was the primary reason for the attacks.

Thus, he was being satirical by saying that the Indonesian Christians must have been attacked for *their* "foreign policy" too.

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