Jakarta – Rival villagers fought with guns and machetes in clashes that killed nine people on a resort island packed with tourists, police said Thursday.
The fighting on Lombok, 25 miles east of Indonesia's main tourist destination of Bali, broke out Wednesday when residents of Perampuan village attacked the hamlet of Bongor, killing one resident, police Capt. Tri Budi Pangastuti said.
Fighting with homemade guns, machetes and other weapons followed, leaving at least eight more people dead. Three people were injured.
Police sent in three platoons to guard the villages, restoring order on the Indian Ocean island whose coastline hotels are still packed with holiday makers. Police said no resorts were affected.
Police said there was no religious element involved in the clashes – only rival gangs in each village. But the fighting added to Indonesia's woes.
A civil war in Aceh province has left 6,000 dead this year; fighting between Christians and Muslims on the Maluku islands has killed more than 4,000 in the last two years. A guerrilla war by Muslims on Aceh trying to secede has killed 6,000 in the last 10 years, while there is an escalating guerrilla war in the nation's easternmost province of Irian Jaya.
The fighting was a potential major blow to the tourist industry on Lombok, one of the up and coming resort islands, 670 miles east of Indonesia's capital, Jakarta.
Lombok's thriving tourist industry has been in a slump for the past year since riots by Muslim radicals shook the island last January. Churches and businesses belonging to the island's Christian minority were ransacked or burned in sectarian attacks.
That violence erupted after thousands of Muslim protesters demanded the government put an immediate end to Christian-Muslim fighting on the Maluku islands, in Indonesia's east.
Police said Thursday they have arrested two more suspects in connection with a wave of Christmas Eve bombings that claimed 17 lives across Indonesia.
The two, identified only as Usman Musa and Umar, were arrested Wednesday in Sukabumi, 60 miles south of Jakarta, local police said. Two people died in the blasts in Sukabumi.
The arrests brought to five the total number of suspects detained in the bombings, which targeted Christian churches in nine cities across this overwhelmingly Muslim archipelago nation. Most of the bombs were placed in cars parked near churches, including the Roman Catholic cathedral in Jakarta. No one has claimed responsibility.