Grace Nirang, Jakarta – Gunmen shot dead nine Christians in Indonesia's eastern Ambon city on Wednesday and police said they could not rule out the possibility of unrest erupting elsewhere during next week's Christmas celebrations.

Indonesia has vowed to impose tight security at all places of worship around December 25 to prevent a repeat of the bomb blasts near churches last Christmas Eve across the world's most populous Muslim country that killed 19 people.

Police spokesman Saleh Saaf said security authorities were trying to calm sectarian tensions in places such as Ambon in the Moluccas islands, where gunmen armed with automatic rifles killed the nine Christians travelling in a boat just after dawn.

Police snipers would be deployed in some places over Christmas, Saaf added, without giving details. In Jakarta alone, police have deployed 15,000 personnel to safeguard the capital during Christmas and into the New Year.

"Based on our intelligence reports, the possibility is wide open that unrest provoked by certain groups or outsiders could occur during the Christmas period," Saaf told Reuters. "In conflict areas we are trying to prevent such outsiders from entering the area and provoking people."

Saaf declined to elaborate on what the intelligence reports showed or name the outside groups, but Christians have recently accused Muslim militants of the Laskar Jihad organisation of stirring up trouble in Central Sulawesi province.

In an encouraging sign for the embattled government of President Megawati Sukarnoputri, there was no sectarian violence during Muslim celebrations at the weekend marking the end of the fasting month of Ramadan.

Snipers on patrol

Megawati has pledged to bring peace to volatile Indonesia as it stumbles toward democracy but analysts have accused a series of central governments, transfixed by political battles in Jakarta, of failing to put enough effort into restoring security. The fall of long-time autocrat Suharto in 1998 has also eroded the power of officials in Jakarta.

Asked if snipers would patrol over Christmas, Saaf said: "Yes, they will be."

Speaking from Ambon, local police spokesman Marthens Alfons said besides those killed, two were wounded when unidentified gunmen pulled their own speedboat close to the victims' craft on waters near the coastal city, a key hub in the Moluccas.

Alfons said marines tried to catch the gunmen, but they escaped. Ambon and other parts of the Moluccas have been plagued by clashes between Muslims and Christians since early 1999 that have left thousands dead and forced many more to flee the region.

"The victims were Christians, who were mostly merchants travelling to buy goods such as meat, fish and vegetables at a morning market in Ambon to be sold again in their areas," Alfons said by telephone, 2,300 km east of Jakarta.

The fresh violence in Ambon followed clashes late last month in another Muslim-Christian trouble spot around the town of Poso in Central Sulawesi, also in the country's east. Both areas had been relatively peaceful for months until recently.

Hope for Poso peace talks

Three days of peace talks involving the warring sides in Poso began on Wednesday aimed at curbing violence that has killed more than 1,000 people in the past three years.

Peace talks to end mayhem around Poso have taken place four times without encouraging results. But the latest talks appear the most comprehensive attempt so far to resolve bloodshed that underscores the tensions hobbling Indonesia's outer reaches.

Local media reported the parties had agreed to discuss issues such as the pullout of groups such as Laskar Jihad, whose members have been fighting Christians in the Moluccas since last year.

One Laskar Jihad leader told reporters that hundreds of members had been sent to Poso in recent weeks to join others already there, ostensibly to help Muslims that are attacked. Poso police said there were no reports of any fresh arrivals.

Analysts have said Laskar Jihad could exploit poor law enforcement in areas such as the Moluccas and Poso but have played down fears they might spark serious religious violence in key parts of Indonesia such as the main Java island.

Some of Indonesia's eastern areas have roughly equal numbers of Muslims and Christians.

Hoping to calm separatist tension elsewhere in Indonesia's east, Megawati will travel to the remote and largely Christian province of Papua, formerly Irian Jaya, on Saturday. Megawati's visit is primarily aimed at publicising a special autonomy package for Papua that has been passed by parliament but rejected by the main pro-independence group there.