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.
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