Palu – Police fired warning shots Thursday as a stone-throwing Muslim mob outside a court house where three Christians were sentenced to death for inciting a massacre and other religious violence that killed hundreds.

The Palu District Court in the town of Palu, in Central Sulawesi province, found the three guilty of training a gang of 700 Christians that attacked Muslim neighborhoods in May last year. In one incident, 191 Muslims sheltering in a mosque were massacred.

Hundreds more people were killed and several villages around the town, about 1,600 kilometers northeast of Jakarta, were destroyed when Muslim gangs retaliated. Fighting continued for one month.

The sectarian violence had spread from the nearby Maluku islands, where fighting between Christians and Muslims had left thousands dead since it broke out in January, 1999. It was not immediately clear if the defendants' lawyers would appeal the verdict.

Outside the courthouse, a mob of about 2,000 Muslims threw stones at the vehicles carrying the defendants to jail. Witnesses said at least one policeman was injured when he was hit by a rock. The crowd dispersed after security forces fired several warning shots.