A bomb ripped through a crowded karaoke cafe in central Indonesia, killing four people and injuring three others, police said yesterday.
The blast -- the latest in a series to hit the world's most populous Muslim nation -- occurred Saturday night in the town of Palopo in South Sulawesi province, Major Wisnu Wirdata said.
Sulawesi island was wracked by violence between its Muslim and Christian populations between 1999 and 2000, but police declined to speculate on whether the blast was linked to religious militants.
Four people -- including a waitress in the cafe -- were killed instantly, said Lieutenant Aziz, who uses a single name. Three others were being treated in a hospital. One was in a critical condition, but was expected to survive, hospital workers said.
The blast was caused by a low-explosive bomb planted on the second floor of the cafe, about 1,800km northeast of Jakarta, officers said.
All the dead and injured were Muslims, Aziz said.
No one immediately claimed responsibility for the bombing.
Fighting between Muslims and Christians in 1999 and 2000 left more than 1,000 dead in Central Sulawesi province. The violence did not spread to South Sulawesi, however.
On Oct. 12, 2002, suspected militants belonging to the al-Qaeda-linked Jemaah Islamiyah militant group blew up two nightclubs on Bali island, killing 202 people, most of them foreign tourists.
Several of the 29 people so far convicted in the Bali blasts cited revenge for the deaths of Muslims on Sulawesi, and the nearby Maluku islands, as a motive for the attacks.
Jemaah Islamiyah has also been linked to a December 2002 blast at a McDonald's restaurant in Makassar, also on Sulawesi island, that killed three.
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