Security tight after Christians killed
Security forces patrolled the Indonesian town of Ambon today after masked men killed 12 Christians in a brutal attack yesterday.
The deaths put further pressure on a fragile peace deal in the religiously divided Maluku province.
Despite the heavy security, Christian and Muslim youths set up barricades on roads leading into their neighbourhoods in the provincial capital.
They were checking vehicles and pedestrians before allowing them to pass, witnesses said.
Ambon, which is divided into Christian and Muslim sections, has been the focus of three years of sectarian violence that has killed up to 9,000 people.
There was still no word on who was behind yesterday’s pre-dawn attack by about a dozen men armed with guns, grenades and daggers on the Christian village of Soya on the outskirts of the city.
A six-month-old child was among the 12 victims. At least 30 homes and a church were torched.
The violence came two days after a militant Islamic group, Laskar Jihad, rejected a February peace deal meant to end the sectarian fighting.
The group denied claims by some Christian leaders it had led the attack.
Gunfire and several bomb blasts were heard late last night, but there were no reports of casualties.
Violence in Maluku, 1,600 miles east of Jakarta, peaked in 2000 when thousands of armed Muslim fighters belonging to Laskar Jihad arrived from Java, Indonesia’s main island.
Some analysts suspect the group has links with Osama bin Laden’s al-Qaida terror network. It has consistently denied the claims.
