A powerful bomb during a concert at a crowded night market killed nine New Year's Eve revelers, including two young boys, and injured 46 in Indonesia's restive Aceh province, a doctor and other witnesses said yesterday.
Indonesia's military blamed the bombing on the region's separatist rebels, who denied the allegation.
The bomb ripped through victims three hours before midnight at the market in the remote eastern Aceh town of Pereulak, said Omar Rusdi, a physician who treated the dead and injured.
Many of the victims were teenagers, including a one-year-old and a seven-year-old boy, he said.
Military spokesman Lieutenant Colonel Ahmad Yani Basuki blamed the rebels.
"It was a powerful bomb," he said. "The rebels always do such [terror]. There is no one else who can do that. Peurelak is a rebel stronghold."
However, spokesman Sofyan Dawood of the Free Aceh Movement denied the rebels were responsible, saying: "The party was organized by the military. They lured people to go there. We have never staged an attack to kill our own people."
Aceh has been battered by 27 years of fighting between separatist guerrillas and government forces.
The blast appeared to have come from a bomb planted under a stage where musicians were playing, said Yusuf Puteh, a volunteer at a local human rights center.
It was the bloodiest bombing in Aceh since the government on May 19 abandoned a six-month truce and launched a massive military offensive against the rebels, who want independence for their oil and gas-rich province.
One victim, Zulkifli, said the band had sung several songs when the bomb blew from one side of stage.
"The three girls were singing up there when there was a huge blast. I saw six people die in front of me. Blood was trickling down my legs," said Zulkifli, who like many Indonesians uses a single name.
"Dozens of people were running in panic," he said.
In her annual New Year's Eve speech, shortly before the bombing, President Megawati Sukarnoputri declared the offensive against the rebels "successful."
"We have succeeded in calming down many upheavals and conflicts among ethnic groups ... in several regions, which have almost torn apart our nation," she said in the speech, broadcast on state-run television station TVRI.
In apparent reference to Aceh, Megawati said: "Even if it is painful, we had to take harsh measures and we have successfully curtailed the movement, which is trying to separate from Indonesia."
The military claims it has killed more than 1,300 suspected rebels since the latest crackdown began, while losing 50 soldiers and 16 police officers.
The rebels say most of those killed have been civilians.
Police say about 500 civilians have been killed.
The rebels launched their independence bid in 1976 after Jakarta refused to give the province increased autonomy. About 12,000 people have died in the conflict, and repeated efforts to forge a peace deal have collapsed amid mutual distrust.
The pitch is a classic: A young celebrity with no climbing experience spends a year in hard training and scales Mount Everest, succeeding against some — if not all — odds. French YouTuber Ines Benazzouz, known as Inoxtag, brought the story to life with a two-hour-plus documentary about his year preparing for the ultimate challenge. The film, titled Kaizen, proved a smash hit on its release last weekend. Young fans queued around the block to get into a preview screening in Paris, with Inoxtag’s management on Monday saying the film had smashed the box office record for a special cinema
CRITICISM: ‘One has to choose the lesser of two evils,’ Pope Francis said, as he criticized Trump’s anti-immigrant policies and Harris’ pro-choice position Pope Francis on Friday accused both former US president Donald Trump and US Vice President Kamala Harris of being “against life” as he returned to Rome from a 12-day tour of the Asia-Pacific region. The 87-year-old pontiff’s comments on the US presidential hopefuls came as he defied health concerns to connect with believers from the jungle of Papua New Guinea to the skyscrapers of Singapore. It was Francis’ longest trip in duration and distance since becoming head of the world’s nearly 1.4 billion Roman Catholics more than 11 years ago. Despite the marathon visit, he held a long and spirited
‘DISAPPEARED COMPLETELY’: The melting of thousands of glaciers is a major threat to people in the landlocked region that already suffers from a water shortage Near a wooden hut high up in the Kyrgyz mountains, scientist Gulbara Omorova walked to a pile of gray rocks, reminiscing how the same spot was a glacier just a few years ago. At an altitude of 4,000m, the 35-year-old researcher is surrounded by the giant peaks of the towering Tian Shan range that also stretches into China, Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan. The area is home to thousands of glaciers that are melting at an alarming rate in Central Asia, already hard-hit by climate change. A glaciologist, Omarova is recording that process — worried about the future. She hiked six hours to get to
The number of people in Japan aged 100 or older has hit a record high of more than 95,000, almost 90 percent of whom are women, government data showed yesterday. The figures further highlight the slow-burning demographic crisis gripping the world’s fourth-biggest economy as its population ages and shrinks. As of Sept. 1, Japan had 95,119 centenarians, up 2,980 year-on-year, with 83,958 of them women and 11,161 men, the Japanese Ministry of Health said in a statement. On Sunday, separate government data showed that the number of over-65s has hit a record high of 36.25 million, accounting for 29.3 percent of