Snipers killed one policeman and wounded two in Indonesia's strife-torn Ambon yesterday, aiming at police and soldiers patrolling the streets to restore order, officials and witnesses said.
Although the death toll from the violence between Christian and Muslim residents rose to some 25, there were signs the fighting that flared over the weekend was dying down.
Nevertheless, the UN said 44 Indonesian staff and their families were leaving the eastern city yesterday. A UN office was among a number of buildings burnt when the violence erupted on Sunday.
Three policemen from the Jakarta mobile brigade were shot in one of the neighborhoods that has seen the worst violence, said Hamid Kasim, an editor of a local newspaper.
Kasim said locals shouted slogans blaming Christians when a wounded policeman was carried into the city's main mosque.
"People became agitated," he said.
A police spokesman said one policeman was killed, disputing earlier witness accounts that two had died.
The Indonesian government has sent 400 police and two army battalions to restore peace in the provincial capital of the eastern Moluccas archipelago. The violence has wounded about 150 people, officials say.
Analysts said complacency was partly to blame for the unrest, which stemmed from an event that has long created tension in a region still traumatized by three years of widespread sectarian fighting that killed 5,000 people before a peace deal was signed in early 2002.
The latest clashes began after police arrested people trying to raise the banned flag of a little known and mostly Christian rebel group, the South Moluccas Republic Movement (RMS), on the anniversary of a failed independence bid 54 years ago.
"The current conflict came about because of police complacency and competition among security forces over territory, between individuals in the police and the army," said defense analyst Kusnanto Anggoro.
"Containment of this flare-up will depend on how that problem is resolved. I don't believe this is coincidental."
On Monday, violence was concentrated in two mixed neighborhoods where scores of houses and a university were set ablaze. The incident prompted shops to close and halted transport in several parts of the city.
Despite the sniper shooting, Ambon was largely free of the street battles and the arson of the past two days.
"There are no more torchings. The troop reinforcements have made the conflict drop drastically. The local government has spread them around sensitive places and people are seeing things get back to normal today," said city official Isaac Saimima. "Very few Christians support RMS."
Another official said she could still hear gunfire and explosions but far less than on Sunday, when the sounds of home-made bomb blasts and shouting mobs filled the air.
Many shops and government offices had reopened.
An official from the UN Development Program said UN staff could return when security improved. The UN has been involved in rebuilding efforts.
KINGPIN: Marset allegedly laundered the proceeds of his drug enterprise by purchasing and sponsoring professional soccer teams and even put himself in the starting lineups Notorious Latin American narco trafficker Sebastian Marset, who eluded police for years, was handed over to US authorities after his arrest on Friday in Bolivia. Marset, a Uruguayan national who was on the US most-wanted list, was passed to agents of the US Drug Enforcement Administration at Santa Cruz airport in Bolivia, then put on a US airplane, Bolivian state television showed. “The arrest and deportation were carried out pursuant to a court order issued by the US justice system,” Bolivian Minister of Government Marco Antonio Oviedo told reporters. The alleged kingpin was arrested in an upscale neighborhood of Santa
FAKE NEWS? ‘When the government demands the press become a state mouthpiece under the threat of punishment, something has gone very wrong,’ a civic group said The top US broadcast regulator on Saturday threatened media outlets over negative coverage of the Middle East war, after US President Donald Trump slammed critical headlines from the “Fake News Media.” The US president since his first term has derided mainstream media as “fake news” and has sued major outlets over what he sees as unfair coverage. Brendan Carr, head of the US Federal Communications Commission — which oversees the nation’s radio, television and Internet media — said broadcasters risked losing their licenses over news coverage. “The law is clear. Broadcasters must operate in the public interest, and they will
SCANDAL: Other images discovered earlier show Andrew bent over a female and lying across the laps of a number of women, while Mandelson is pictured in his underpants A photograph of former British prince Andrew and veteran politician Peter Mandelson sitting in bathrobes alongside late sex offender Jeffrey Epstein was unearthed on Friday in previously published documents. The image is believed to be the first known photograph of the two men with Epstein. They are currently engulfed in scandal in the UK over their ties to their mutual friend. The undated photograph, first reported by ITV News, shows King Charles III’s disgraced brother and former British ambassador to the US sitting barefoot outside on a wooden deck. They appear to have mugs with a US flag on them
INFLUTENTIAL THEORIST: Habermas was particularly critical of the ‘limited interest’ shown by German politicians in ‘shaping a politically effective Europe Jurgen Habermas, whose work on communication, rationality and sociology made him one of the world’s most influential philosophers and a key intellectual figure in his native Germany, has died. He was 96. Habermas’ publisher, Suhrkamp, said he died on Saturday in Starnberg, near Munich. Habermas frequently weighed in on political matters over several decades. His extensive writing crossed the boundaries of academic and philosophical disciplines, providing a vision of modern society and social interaction. His best-known works included the two-volume Theory of Communicative Action. Habermas, who was 15 at the time of Nazi Germany’s defeat, later recalled the dawn of
RSS