| Submit your comments on this article |
| Southeast Asia |
| Explosives cache discovered in Sulawesi |
| 2006-04-09 |
| Indonesian police found 40 homemade bombs in a graveyard in the eastern part of Central Sulawesi province that has been plagued by religious violence in recent years, officials said Sunday. The bombs were found at a public cemetery in Poso district town, and consisted of ammonium nitrate, fuses and batteries. They could have been detonated by a timing device, said Poso police chief Lieutenant Colonel Rudi Sufahriadi. "The bombs could be the remains of devices from the past conflict," Sufahriadi said, adding that the police bomb-squad had deactivated the explosives. Poso, about 1,650 kilometres northeast of Jakarta, and nearby regions have been wracked by communal clashes between Muslim and Christian communities, leaving more than 1,000 dead in 2000 and 2001. Religious-related violence eased in 2002 after Muslim and Christian leaders signed a peace accord in late 2001. But sporadic bombings and killings, mostly targeting the Christian community, have still occurred since then. In late May of last year, two powerful blasts ripped through an open market in the Tentena sub-district of Poso, killing at least 22 people and injuring more than 70. On late October, unidentified assailants attacked a group of Christian high school girls, beheading three and seriously wounding another. Indonesia is the world's most populous Muslim nation, but Central Sulawesi has roughly equal numbers of Muslims and Christians. Members of Jemaah Islamiyah, a regional terrorist group blamed for a series of bloody bombings in Jakarta and on Bali island in recent years, are believed to be active in the region. |
| Posted by:Dan Darling |