Ambon – Twenty-two people have been killed and scores badly injured in a major outbreak of Muslim-Christian violence in the eastern Indonesian city of Ambon, medical staff said on Monday. The violence which flared on Sunday after a parade by Christian separatists was the worst since a pact in February 2002 ended three years of sectarian fighting in which some 5,000 people died.

Hundreds of extra police and troops have been rushed to the waterfront city in the Maluku islands.

Rivai Ambon, director of Al Fatah hospital, told AFP that 15 people had died at his hospital or had been brought in dead since Sunday. Six of them died on Monday, he said, and 60 others were still receiving treatment. Tikauli, an official with the Maluku branch of the Indonesian Red Cross, said after visiting Bakti Rahayu hospital that five people had died or were brought there already dead since Sunday.

She said one man with a gunshot wound was brought in on Monday.

A nurse at Haulussy hospital said there were no further deaths besides two who died on Sunday of bullet wounds. Another person died of a heart attack. But three people were admitted on Monday, one of them severely injured.

Maluku Provincial Police chief Brig. Gen. Bambang Sutrisno said 121 people were badly injured.

The UN mission, a large hotel and a church were among several buildings set ablaze during Sunday's riot, when gangs armed with machetes and other weapons took to the streets.

Residents said the city was quieter on Monday after intermittent early-morning blasts and gunshots.

Sunday's violence followed a banned parade by mainly Christian separatists of the Maluku Sovereignty Front to mark the 54th anniversary of the proclamation of a self-styled South Maluku Republic (RMS).

They traded jeers, insults and stones with mainly Muslim opponents.

A state of emergency was lifted last September. Local authorities and United Nations officials had been working to achieve reconciliation.