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Indonesian police detain man after market bombing

Posted on: Saturday, 31 December 2005, 23:08 CST

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)

Source: REUTERS

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