|
|
Change Your Life! |
Muslim-Christian fighting enters third day in Ambon, 10 killed |
|
News |
|
|
June 24, 2000
TERNATE, Indonesia (AP) - Fierce sectarian street battles flared for a third straight day in Ambon, the capital of the Maluku islands, on Friday, killing at least 10 people, residents and officials said.
Mobs exchanged gunfire and fought with swords and spears as others set fire to a Christian university, two mosques and dozens of homes. Blasts from homemade bombs echoed across the town.
The fighting in Ambon has now claimed at least 23 lives since Wednesday. It erupted after Muslim fighters killed more than 100 Christians in Duma village on Halmahera island in the north of the island group on Monday.
Malik Selang, an official at Ambon's main Al-Fatah mosque said seven Muslims were killed in nearby Talake neighborhood on Friday morning.
An official at the state-run Haulusy hospital, said at least three more people were killed and 20 were injured. The religions of the three had not been determined.
Malik said two mosques had been burned by Christian gangs.
Frightened residents said violence was continuing in the western and eastern outskirts of Ambon, about 2,500 kilometers (1,500 miles) northeast of Indonesia's capital, Jakarta.
"We can hear gunfire and bomb blasts from here," said one Christian resident, who identified himself by the single name of Arisa.
"I live one block away from the Christian university. It is on fire now," he said. "Maybe we have to fight to the death today."
Other residents accused some security forces of siding with Muslim fighters during Friday's violence.
Military commanders in Ambon were not immediately available for comment.
Both Muslim and Christian leaders in the past have accused soldiers of taking sides according to their respective religions.
Others say soldiers and police have done little to control rampaging mobs.
In response, the military claims it has been caught in the middle of the escalating sectarian feud and is often outnumbered.
Five security personnel have been killed in Ambon and a police barracks there has been destroyed by fire since Wednesday.
In Jakarta, senior military officers were reportedly mulling whether martial law should be declared in the Maluku islands, also known as the Moluccas or Spice Islands in Dutch colonial times.
"Although martial law will not necessarily solve the problems in Maluku, it will provide a conducive situation for us in conducting operations to put an end to the unrest," The Jakarta Post newspaper quoted military spokesman Rear Air Marshall Graito Usodo as saying.
"People seem to have lost their commonsense," he said. "All they want now is to kill each other in the name of religious teachings."
Almost 3,000 people have been killed in the fighting in Maluku since the conflict started in January 1999.
|