Posted on 04/03/2002 12:06:26 AM PST by colette_g
It was the first serious violation of a ceasefire deal signed in February after three years of Muslim-Christian violence that left thousands dead.
The device - thought to be a car bomb - exploded in a Christian-controlled part of the port city, in the eastern Moluccan islands.
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Following the explosion, a group of residents forced their way into a government compound, setting fire to a building, police said.
"It was a powerful explosion," said one police officer. "The perpetrators obviously had training."
There were a number of minor bomb blasts in the Moluccas following the peace treaty. Senior government officials blamed the attacks on paramilitaries opposed to the deal.
Muslim militants belonging to the Laskar Jihad group have vowed to disrupt the peace process.
Weapons surrender
The Muslim-Christian violence broke out in 1999 - sparked by a minor traffic accident - and led to more than 5,000 deaths. Hundreds of thousands of people fled their homes.
The two sides agreed to work towards peace
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The violence got worse in 2000 with the arrival of the Java-based Laskar Jihad. Under the February peace deal, there is to be an inquiry into the group's activities as well as into two Christian separatist groups.
Since the peace deal the region has been fairly calm, with both Muslim and Christian communities agreeing to hand over their weapons.
The numbers of Christians and Muslims are almost evenly split in the Moluccas, while Indonesia as a whole is 85% Muslim.
28/29 of the world's trouble spots are islamic in origin.
This is the same-old same-old "equivalency" of violence that Reuters, the BBC and every other pinko rag uses to describe Arafat's war against Israel and Israel's desperate defense of it's population.
There are no Christians or Hindus around the world gathering arms, setting up training camps for terrorists and murderers against the Muslims. No, the Muslim-Christian violence is, as in Israel, Muslims on jihad against non-Muslims, and the pathetic, unarmed attempts of the non-Muslims to defend themselves. May the BBC rot in hell.
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