Troops rush to Indonesian city
JAKARTA, Indonesia -- Indonesia has sent a battalion of troops to the strife-torn Maluku region as local security forces struggle to regain control following a deadly outbreak of sectarian violence.
Indonesia's Military Chief General Endriartono Sutarto ordered the deployment to the regional capital Ambon on Monday, the official news agency Antara reports.
National Police Chief General Pol Da`i Bachtiar also promised to add two companies of anti-riot police to the police force in Ambon to help quell the Christian-Muslim clashes which broke out on Sunday.
The death toll from the fighting has now reached 24 after snipers shot and killed three paramilitary police and a mob hacked a man to death.
An Associated Press reporter saw the bodies of the three policemen carried out of trucks into the city's main Al-Fatah mosque.
Dozens of Muslims, brandishing long swords and sticks, crowded around yelling "Jihad" or Holy War and "God is Great."
Meanwhile mobs hacked to death a man as he left a boat in the city main port Yos Sudarso late Monday night, witnesses told the AP.
The body was left lying on the ground until volunteers brought it to a mosque the following morning.
Unlike the previous two days, there was no mob violence in the streets Tuesday, although unidentified gunmen fired potshots along the main avenues dividing the two communities, the AP reported.
Most shops and all government offices were closed, and makeshift barricades had sprung up in many neighborhoods.
The surge of violence broke out Sunday afternoon at a Christian rally celebrating the anniversary of their struggle for independence from Indonesia.
The Malukus are 2,600 kilometers (1,600 miles) east of Jakarta. Known as the Spice Islands during Dutch colonial days, the Malukus were once held up as a model of religious harmony.
But nearly 10,000 people have died in Muslim-Christian conflict in Ambon since 1999.
The conflict intensified after 1999 with the arrival of volunteers belonging to Laskar Jihad -- or Holy War Troops -- a newly created militia from Indonesia's main island of Java.
Muslims and Christians signed a government sponsored peace pact in 2002, but sporadic violence has broken out and they now live in separate communities.
The latest clashes are some of the bloodiest since the truce.
Indonesia is predominantly Muslim, but the Malukus' two million people are evenly divided between Muslims and Christians.
Most of the Muslims are settlers who were moved to the Malukus from other densely populated islands in the 1970s and 80s under the Suharto dictatorship's migration program to dilute the secessionist movement.
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Associated Press contributed to this report.
