Jakarta – Nearly 3,000 volunteers of a militant Indonesian Muslim jihad (holy war) force are still in the riot-torn eastern city of Ambon, a report said Saturday.

A spokesman for the Ahlussunnah wal Jama'ah Forum, Ayip Syafruddin, said that the 2,900 members of the group, known as the Laskar Jihad, are taking a break after a month of fighting against Christians. "They are now taking care of the refugees," Syafruddin was quoted as saying Friday by the Detikcom on-line news service.

Syafruddin, speaking in the central Java town of Yogyakarta, said none of the group's members had been killed during the fighting. "But one of our members was shot and wounded by a sniper when he was on his way to preach in Ambon," he said.

He also denied that the group's fighters were involved in the looting of arsenals during a raid on a police housing complex in Ambon last month, in which at least two policemen were killed.

Many have blamed the recent upsurge of violence in the Malukus, of which Ambon is the main city, on the arrival of members of the jihad force from Java island.

Maluku governor Saleh Latuconsina, in an interview with AFP in early June, said the jihad forces had acted like a "vitamin" tonic on the Muslims fighting there. And Indonesian Defence Minister Jowono Sudarsono told journalists Friday that outside forces were the main reason for the escalation of the conflict.

"The dispatch of the jihad force and other forces has reached almost 10,000 people in the last three months and they have become the main reason for the ongoing conflict," Sudarsono was quoted by the Jakarta Post as saying.