Indonesian police detain man after market bombing

PALU, Indonesia (Reuters) – Indonesian police have detained
a man and tightened road blocks around the city of Palu in a
hunt for those responsible for killing seven people in a nail
bomb attack on Christian market on New Year’s Eve.

Rais Adam, spokesman for police in volatile Central
Sulawesi province where Palu is the capital, said on Sunday
that police had also raided several locations. He declined to
give details.

“A man has been detained. We are interrogating him,” Adam
said from Palu, 1,650 km (1,030 miles) northeast of Jakarta.
The man was detained on Saturday near the site of the blast,
but had not been named as a suspect, he added.

The blast in a Christian market selling pork came after
warnings of militant violence during the Christmas and New Year
season in the world’s most populous Muslim nation.

Pork is forbidden to Muslims, who account for some 85
percent of Indonesia’s people, but the east of the country has
large pockets of Christians.

Police said the detained man had been acting suspiciously
near the market the day before the blast. He had not been seen
in the area before and was asking store keepers questions about
where they lived.

Some 53 people were wounded in the attack, many by nails
packed into the homemade bomb.

Analysts said the blast was probably linked to attempts to
stoke tension in the region.

Central Sulawesi has been plagued by religious violence and
tension since the late 1990s. Fighting between Muslims and
Christians from 1998-2001 killed 2,000 people, mainly around
the Muslim town of Poso.

Adam said numerous witnesses had been questioned.

Roadblocks set up around Palu a few months ago — part of
security preparations for various Muslim and Christian holidays
– had been tightened, he added.

Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono condemned the
bombing and ordered an investigation.

In a New Year address on Saturday night, Yudhoyono said the
country had to be on guard for more attacks.

While a peace accord halted the 1998-2001 bloodshed in
Central Sulawesi, violence has erupted sporadically.

In one of the worst incidents, three teenage Christian
girls were beheaded near Poso last October. Bombings last May
in the Central Sulawesi Christian town of Tentena killed 22
people.

Inter-communal violence has killed thousands in Indonesia
since the downfall of longtime autocrat Suharto in 1998.

The nation of 220 million people has experienced several
major bomb attacks on Western targets as well, mostly blamed on
Jemaah Islamiah, a group seen as al Qaeda’s Southeast Asian
arm.

Police had been warning for weeks of possible militant
attacks during the Christmas and New Year period, and security
has been stepped up throughout the country.

Despite the Muslim dominance of Indonesia’s population, in
some eastern parts Christian and Muslim numbers are about
equal.

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

(With reporting by Telly Nathalia in Jakarta)