Pontianak – Indonesian riot police fired blanks to keep apart two feuding communities yesterday after a row erupted between locals and migrants in the western part of Borneo island.

By mid-afternoon, police in the West Kalimantan capital of Pontianak were stationed between local Malays and migrants from the island of Madura, off Java.

The two groups of about 200 each, wielding machetes, swords, sickles and homemade spears, were just 25 metres apart. Witnesses said the confrontation began after a minor accident in which a bus driven by a Madura migrant clipped a Malay motorcyclist.

Pontianak's streets were largely deserted as residents, fearing the tense stand-off could ignite a repeat of previous bloody ethnic clashes, cowered in their homes. It was also a Muslim public holiday throughout Indonesia.

Elsewhere, clashes between Christians and Muslims flared up in Indonesia's troubled Maluku Islands, killing at least seven people. A Muslim cleric, Malik Selang, of Ambon's main Al-Fatah Mosque, said six Muslims had been killed in Monday's fighting in Kairatu, a town on Seram Island. A soldier was also killed.

The violence started when a Muslim group ambushed a bus carrying Christians on the island, 2,300 km east of Jakarta, he said. As many as 17 houses were burned before soldiers fired on the Muslim attackers. Christian gangs also joined the fighting. More than 4,000 people have been killed in the Malukus since sectarian fighting erupted in January last year.