May 30, 2005 2:20 AM
Indonesia blasts have Qaeda similarities
By Beawiharta and Nury Sybli
TENTENA/JAKARTA (Reuters) - Twin bomb blasts that killed 22 people in
a Christian town in eastern Indonesia bore the hallmarks of a regional
militant group linked to al Qaeda, the vice president and a senior
police official said on Sunday.
Some 50 people were wounded in the blasts on Saturday which ripped
through a busy market in the lakeside town of Tentena on the eastern
island of Sulawesi, the worst bombings in Indonesia since the 2002
Bali attacks that killed 202 people.
Tentena is part of an area where 2,000 people were killed in three
years of Muslim-Christian fighting until a peace deal was agreed in
late 2001.
Vice President Jusuf Kalla said the bombings were similar to those
carried out by Jemaah Islamiah, a shadowy militant group seen as the
regional arm of al Qaeda.
He singled out Malaysian Noordin M. Top, one of the most wanted men in
the region and a key Jemaah Islamiah operative.
"The pattern is at least like that carried out by Noordin M. Top,"
Kalla told reporters in Jakarta, without giving details.
Top and another fugitive Malaysian and senior Jemaah Islamiah member,
bombmaker Azahari bin Husin, are accused of masterminding a spate of
blasts in Indonesia including the 2002 attacks on the resort island of
Bali.
A senior police official in Jakarta, asked if the Tentena attacks
resembled previous bombings blamed on Jemaah Islamiah, said: "There
are similarities, based on the analysis of the anti-terror team." He
did not elaborate.
Nearby Poso was the focus of much of the past Sulawesi violence, which
drew militants from groups like Jemaah Islamiah.
There has been some violence since the peace deal but Saturday's
bombings, less than 15 minutes apart, were among the worst cases and
raised fears sectarian strife would reignite.
TENSION REMAINS
Tentena was tense on Sunday, but local community leaders were trying
to keep a lid on passions, residents said.
Some 85 percent of Indonesia's 220 million people are Muslim. But in
some eastern parts, Christian and Muslim populations are about equal
in size.
Chief security minister Widodo Adi Sutjipto told reporters after a
ministerial crisis meeting in Jakarta that the government would step
up intelligence operations.
Saturday's blasts follow Western government warnings about terrorist
attacks in the world's most populous Muslim nation.
On Thursday, the United States closed all of its four diplomatic
missions in Indonesia because of a security threat, hough no officials
have linked the Tentena attacks and the mission closures.
President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono said he would cut short an overseas
trip and return home if authorities could not deal with the situation,
the official Antara news agency reported.
Yudhoyono was speaking on Saturday night after arriving in Hanoi
following a visit to the United States. From Vietnam, the former
general will travel to Japan.
One of the aims of his trip is to convince foreign investors that
Indonesia is a safe and easier place to do business, after years of
ineffective government and occasional major bombings by Jemaah
Islamiah.
The Moluccas islands, to the east of the Poso region, were also the
scene of vicious communal fighting between Muslims and Christians from
1999 to 2002 that left more than 5,000 dead. A peace agreement was
reached there in early 2002.
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