Six killed in market blast in Indonesia

A suspected bomb blast rocked a crowded market selling pork in eastern Indonesia on Saturday, killing six people and wounding 45, local media reported.

Police said they believed a bomb caused the explosion in the town of Palu, capital of volatile Central Sulawesi province.

The blast comes amid a spate of warnings from authorities about militant violence during the Christmas and New Year season in the world’s most populous Muslim nation. Pork is forbidden to Muslims, but eastern Indonesia has large pockets of Christians.

El Shinta news radio station reported that unexploded bombs had also been found in two provinces on Sumatra island in the country’s west. The bomb squad had been called to both.

“Our prediction because of the sound of the explosion was that it seems it was a bomb,” said Rais Adam, police spokesman for Central Sulawesi, a region plagued by religious violence and tension since the last 1990s.

He did not have a figure for casualties. El Shinta and Metro TV put the death toll at six.

The blast occurred soon after dawn when people were shopping.

Bystanders carried bloodied people onto a nearby road, putting them in passing cars to be taken to hospital. One wounded man screamed as he held up his bloodied arms.

The official Antara news agency said another bomb was found and defused near the site of the first blast in Palu, which lies 1,030 miles northeast of Jakarta.

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A history of violence
Fighting between Muslims and Christians in Central Sulawesi from 1998-2001 killed 2,000 people, mainly around the town of Poso.

While a peace accord halted the bloodshed, violence has erupted sporadically. In one of the worst incidents, three teenage Christian girls were beheaded near Poso last October. Bomb attacks last May in the Central Sulawesi town of Tentena killed 22 people.

Inter-communal violence has taken thousands of lives in Indonesia over the years, and the sprawling country of 220 million people has seen several major bomb attacks on Western targets as well.

The deadliest, blamed on the Jemaah Islamiah group, seen as al Qaeda’s Southeast Asian arm, killed 202 people, mostly tourists, in Bali in October 2002.

About 85 percent of Indonesia’s people are Muslim. In some eastern parts, Christian and Muslim populations are about equal.

Most Indonesian Muslims are moderates, but there has been an increasingly active militant minority in recent years.