Jakarta – Muslim-Christian violence raged for the third day running in the eastern Indonesian city of Ambon on Tuesday, after claiming at least 33 lives the previous day, residents said.
The sound of gunfire and explosions from grenades and home-made bombs has echoed around the city since dawn, the sources said, adding that a number of buildings were in flames.
Few details of any casualties on Tuesday were immediately available. "Clashes have continued unabated since last night," Rahman, a member of the Muslim Al Fatah mosque, told AFP. Christians attacked a Muslim neighborhood in the city's Diponegoro area with hand grenades and home-made bombs, he said. "They use real grenades and standard military guns," Rahman said.
Meanwhile a member of staff at the Ambon chapter of the Indonesian Red Cross said Muslims on Tuesday attacked an area near the Silo Protestant Church which was torched on Monday.
The headquarters of state electricity firm PT. PLN in the area near Silo was also burning, the Red Cross official added. "You have been able to hear a lot of gunfire and bombs since before dawn," he added.
Both Muslims and Christians have accused the Indonesian military of backing the other side, and the Indonesian Communion of Churches (PGI) on Tuesday issued a statement calling for international peacekeepers to be deployed across Maluku province.
PGI said the military and police must be held accountable for the unresolved and escalating conflict in the Spice Islands. "If accountability is not undertaken, then, taking into consideration the continuing violence and heeding the people's strong feelings, it would be best if TNI and police forces were pulled out of Maluku and were replaced with international peacekeepers," the PGI statement said.
Signed by PGI chairman Bishop Sulaso Sopater and secretary general JM Pattiasina, the statement said that if the violence is allowed to continue unchecked the indigenous people of the Maluku islands will be wiped out along with their institutions.
The people of the Malukus are predominantly Melanesian, but many have blamed this year's violence on the arrival of Muslim migrants from the neighbouring provinces of South and Southeast Sulawesi to the west.
The migrants have progressed to dominate the local economy, causing jealousy and disturbing the precarious inter-religious stability which existed previously because of kin ties between the communities.
The latest clashes in Ambon were set off after a car driven by a Christian ran over a child. The Muslims accused the Christians of taking the injured 14-year-old Muslim boy hostage. Rahman said at least 30 Muslims, including a soldier, died in the clashes on Monday. He blamed the troops for the killings.
A man staffing an emergency post at the Marantha church said street battles were taking place in the Jalan Baru area of Ambon, but he refused to give details. Another staff member at Maranatha, who identified herself as Lusi, said later that an estimated 400 Christians had sought refuge at the church.
"Some of them have sought refuge because their homes were burned while others have come out of fear," she said. She said witnesses saw a man shot during clashes on Tuesday afternoon and that the sound of gunfire and military armored cars could be heard from the church.
In addition to clashes in Ambon, where hundreds have died in sectarian violence this year, serious violence has also been reported in other areas of the Malukus in recent days.
Clashes on Buru island which erupted on Wednesday last week had left at least 125 people dead by Sunday, the Media Indonesia daily reported Monday. The report said thousands of people on Buru had fled to the mountains to seek refuge.
The violence on Buru was set off by a scuffle between two workers at a plywood factory and continued unchecked through to Sunday, the Media Indonesia said.
Police in Masohi on the neighboring island of Seram – which oversees security on Buru – declined to confirm the death toll when contacted by AFP. Buru could not be reached by telephone.