Sunday, April 11, 2004
Gunmen attack Sulawesi church, seven hurt
Associated Press Jakarta, April 11
Unidentified assailants fired automatic weapons at a group of Christian worshippers attending Easter services in Indonesia's Central Sulawesi province, injuring seven people.
Two gunmen in black uniforms rode up to the Tabernacle Church in Poso on a motorbike and fired several bursts of automatic fire at the congregation before fleeing, police chief Lt. Col. Abdi Dharma Sitepu said.
Those injured included a 4-year-old girl, her parents and the pastor. None suffered life-threatening injuries. "The gunmen fired indiscriminately as the churchgoers were singing a hymn.
The region has been wracked in recent years by religious violence that killed around 1,000 people. Although large-scale fighting ended two years ago, in the past three months several prominent Christians have been killed or injured by gunmen.
Security forces have arrested five suspected Muslim militants, including an Arab man.
Hundreds of police have been sent to secure Poso, where tensions were high, Assegaf said. Poso is 1,600 kilometers (1,000 miles) northeast of Jakarta. "We are combing the area around the church," Sitepu said. "We still don't know who the perpetrators are."
Indonesia is the world's most populous Muslim nation, but Central Sulawesi has roughly equal Muslim and Christian populations. The sectarian conflict in Poso broke out in 1999, soon after a religious war erupted in the nearby Maluku islands. A Muslim militia, Laskar Jihad, was blamed for thousands of deaths in the fighting that ended in 2002. The group was reportedly set up by a hardline faction in the army following the overthrow of longtime dictator Suharto in 1998, with the aim of destabilizing elected governments.
It was abruptly disbanded soon after the Bali nightclub bombings in 2002, when international attention focused on radical groups operating within Indonesia. The Bali bombings were carried out by Jemaah Islamiyah, a Southeast Asian militant network linked to al-Qaida, which has been blamed for numerous other attacks in the region.
© Hindustan Times Ltd. 2004.