Attack on Indonesian village

Attack on Indonesian village
AGENCE FRANCE PRESSE

JAKARTA, JULY 8: An attack by thousands of Muslims on the Christian village of Waai in the riot-torn Indonesian city of Ambon Left 22 dead and 57 seriously injured, the official Antara news agency said on Saturday.

It quoted sources from the Maranatha church in Ambon as saying 17 of the bodies found after the attack, which happened on Thursday, had been identified. Early Friday church workers had said they had been unable to reach the area of the attack to check on casualties because the surrounding roads had been blocked with tree trunks.

The village people had either fled by sea, or were still hiding in the woods to the West of the village, Antara said, adding that the downtown area of Ambon was "relatively quiet" on Saturday, but the sounds of explosions and rifle fire could still be heard.

On Friday, a Christian crisis group in Ambon said troops were withdrawn from Waai before the attack, despite a protest by Maluku governor Saleh Latuconsina. "The Governor protested, but in vain," the group said in a fax received here.

"At the very start of the attack the villagers called in the help of the military at Suli - to the South - but they said they had not been ordered to go to Waai, so they could not help," the fax said. It added that at the time of the attack a promotion ceremony for Maluku military commander Brigadier General I Made Yasa, was underway. The report said at least 100,000 Christians in Ambon now needed "immediate evacuation" because they were in grave danger, and that more refugees were starving due to a lack of food.

Some 4,000 people - both Muslim and Christian - have died in the 18 months of sectarian fighting in the Maluku islands since the violence first erupted in the capital city of Ambon in January of 1999, and more than half a million refugees have been driven from their homes.

Jakarta declared a civil emergency in the islands on June 28, but it failed to stem the bloodshed, and reports of troops taking sides in the conflict including in the attack on Waai, have resulted in mounting calls for foreign peace keepers to intervene. But Indonesian Foreign Minister Alwi Shihab on Friday summoned the diplomatic corps in Jakarta and warned that the government was "strongly opposed" to any foreign intervention.