Ambon – Nine people were killed and at least 60 injured Thursday as clashes raged for a third straight day between Muslims and Christian in the eastern Indonesian city of Ambon, witnesses said.
The violence came a day after at least 23 people were killed in the worst clashes in a month between Muslims and Christians in Ambon, the capital of Maluku province.
Three Christians were killed as Muslims mobs set ablaze a church and dozens of houses in the Ahuru area here Thursday, said Noya Dileopistos, an official manning the Maranatha protestant emergency post in Ambon.
"Three Christians were shot dead inside their houses and 52 others were injured," Dileopistos told AFP. Six Muslims were killed by gunshot wounds in the clashes in Ahuru and their bodies were taken later Thursday to the Al Fatah mosque, an AFP reporter saw. At least 60 people from the two religious communities were wounded, the reporter said.
Sammy Weileruni, a lawyer at the Maranatha church, said Muslim militants known as the Laskar Jihad (Holy Warriors), who had arrived from Java island, were behind the attack on Christian houses. "They have been launching attacks on Christians since Tuesday," he told AFP.
Witnesses said most of the 20 Muslims killed in the three days of clashes were native Ambonese. "You can tell from their names," one said.
An estimated 2,000 Laskar Jihad members have sailed from the East Java city of Surabaya to the Malukus in what they said was a mission to spread Islamic teaching, but local residents and the military fear their arrival will aggravate the religious conflict.
A Maluku military officer, who requested anonymity, said the latest attacks on Christians were triggered by the killing of two Muslims in the village of Passo on Tuesday. "They [Muslims] were angry and accused the military of covering up the incident," he told AFP.
Dileopistos said more than 100 houses and the Jacobus catholic church in the Ahuru Karang Panjang area of Ambon were burned down by Muslim mobs who have attacked the area since Thursday morning. He charged that members of the Kostrad army strategic reserves command took part in the attack.
The state Antara news agency said earlier Thursday hundreds of men in white or black Islamic dress attacked homes in the Ahuru Karang Panjang area of Ambon and burned them down, and the sound of explosions could be heard.
The attackers were backed by some members of security forces, who shot at those who got in their way, Antara quoted residents as saying. "Since this morning they have been burning dozens of houses in the Ahuru area," a resident told Antara. Sounds of grenade and home-made bomb explosions could be heard, Antara said, but there were no immediate reports of killings.
On Wednesday at least 23 people were killed and more than 50 injured, many of them shot by security forces, in the first major eruption of violence in Ambon since April 30 when six people were killed and more than 10 injured in the same downtown area near Ambon's port. Most of the victims were Muslims.
The renewed violence erupted Tuesday after a man, identified as Nyong Ferdinandus, was killed by a truck in a hit-and-run accident. Shops and businesses have been closed by the violence since Tuesday.
The wave of sectarian violence which has plagued the Malukus for over a year began with a January 1999 incident in the same area of Ambon as Tuesday's clashes.
Since the Muslim-Christian clashes began, more than 3,000 people have been killed, thousands of homes and buildings gutted and hundreds of thousands of people have been forced to flee to safety in other islands and provinces.