Jakarta – Mobs looted warehouses and stores of rice, sugar and instant noodles for the third straight day Wednesday in the Indonesian provincial capital of Pontianak, sources and press reports said. "The looting is continuing, this time in downtown Pontianak in the central market area," a staff member at the police information office told AFP by telephone. "Two rice stores were looted this morning by people pretending to be customers," the owner of Budi Karya food shop in the central market said.

The shop owner said a group of people waited until the two stores – Apin and Ayau – were crowded. "They then complained about the high price and started looting, provoking others to join in," he said. "Some 100 people ended up pillaging the rice in the store for about two hours until the police managed to stop them."

The official said nine people were being questioned over Wednesday's incident, the latest of in mounting cases of food pillaging in the Pontianak area and the country. Scores of warehouses and shops storing rice, sugar, cooking oil and instant noodles in Pontianak area have been ransacked by looters since Monday. The Kompas daily estimated that some 2,000 to 3,000 tonnes of rice, 1,500 tonnes of sugar, 500 kilograms of cooking oil had been looted.

Chandra Wijaya, owner of a basic goods stores named "Sanmaru" told Kompas he had lost some one billion rupiah (some 80,000 dollars) after pillagers cleaned out 60 tonnes of rice, 5,000 cartons of instant noodles and 50 drums of cooking oil from his store. "Those were essential good supplies for Kapuas Hulu," Wijaya said, referring to a district some 600 kilometres from Pontianak, the capital of West Kalimantan which borders Malaysia.

Sumitro from the city's social and politics department said the looting was scattered over several locations but seemed to have been instigated. "There must be mass mobilization because it would be impossible for those looters to move so quickly otherwise," Sumitro told AFP.

He said it appeared the instigators had alerted people of cheap government rice sales, when in fact there was none. "These hungry and disappointed people could easily turned to looters," he added.

The three consecutive days of looting have almost paralyzed the daily economy in Pontianak with many shops closing until security is restored. Pontianak lies on a road connecting the city and Kuching in neighbouring Malaysia, which is a well known smuggling route.

In the district of Bondowoso in East Java in August, scores of rice mills were attacked. In central Java farmers have said gangs working at night harvested whole rice fields before the farmers could do it themselves. In North Sumatra capital Medan looters boarded supply trucks waiting to enter toll roads and made off with sacks of rice, Media Indonesia said Wednesday.