Jakarta – Shoot-on-sight orders were issued to police as the death toll in fresh violence between two ethnic groups in the Indonesian province of West Kalimantan rose to five when a mob attacked a police post, reports and police said Wednesday.
Two more badly mutilated bodies were found late Tuesday, the Kompas daily said, bringing the death toll of the violence that has spread to three sub-districts in Sambas district to five since Monday.
The deaths could not be immediately confirmed with the police in Singkawang, the main town of Sambas district. "It is quite possible but so far we have not received the report about the new findings [of bodies]," police Corporal Syamsu told AFP.
However, he confirmed a mob had attempted to attack the subdistrict police station in Tebas, the main town in the subdistrict of the same name where the violence initially broke out on Monday.
"It was already late yesterday [Tuesday] when a mob appeared and started to pelt the Tebas sub-district police post with stones, asking that the people seeking refuge there be turned over to them," Syamsu said.
He declined to give further details other than saying scores of villagers, mostly women and children, had holed up at the police station since Monday fearing attacks on their homes. The Kompas daily said police had fired warning shots to disperse the attackers.
West Kalimantan police chief Colonel Chaerul Rashid was quoted by the daily as having ordered officers to shoot on sight anyone trying to stir unrest in three sub-districts – Tebas, Pemangkat and Jawai.
Police in Singkawang on Tuesday said the violence was between members of the Madurese ethnic group, orginally from the island of Madura off eastern Java, and the local Malay community.
Police said four people, including one member of the Madurese ethnic group, suspected of starting the violence had been detained.
Kompas said police also launched a search for weapons in the three sub-districts from late on Monday. They seized hundreds of weapons and several fuel bombs.
Syamsu said shops, businesses and schools remained closed in Tebas but a few shops had reopened in the two other subdistricts. Hundreds of police and soldiers have been deployed in the area, he said.
The trouble started when one one of those now detained refused to pay the fare on a public transport vehicle in Tebas on Sunday. The fare collector, from the Malay community, insisted that he pay.
Rudi later went to the collector's village of Semparuk and attacked him with a sickle, seriously wounding him, police has said.
The local Malay community responded by torching 20 houses in Tebas in the early hours of Monday. Another 18 houses were torched as violence spread to the two neighbouring subdistricts of Pemangkat and Jawai.
A mob also attacked a cabin housing road workers and killed two people there. A third man found dead in Tebas is also believed to have been killed by a mob.
Tebas, 145 kilometres north of the West Kalimantan capital of Pontianak, witnessed an outbreak of violence in January between the ethnic Madurese and Malay communities in which three people died.