A homemade bomb exploded early yesterday outside a Hindu temple on an Indonesian island that has been plagued by religious violence, wounding a man who was guarding the compound, police said.
The blast in Poso, a coastal town on the island of Sulawesi, was caused by a low-intensity bomb that was placed in the home of the temple's guard, said Poso deputy police chief, Major Andreas Wayan.
The device detonated when the 40-year-old man, Nengah Sugiarta, opened the door, causing the roof and wooden walls to collapse, he said.
"Whoever did this wanted to create panic and spread terror here in Poso," Wayan said, adding that police found black powder, nails, shrapnel and a battery at the scene indicating the bomb was homemade.
Hundreds of onlookers gathered around the temple after the blast, which seriously wounded Sugiarta, riddling his legs and waist with shrapnel and wood. The Hindu man, who has been the temple's guard for 15 years, was taken to a nearby hospital.
Wayan said it was too early to say who was behind Friday's attack -- the first to target Hindus in Poso, a city 1,600km northeast of Jakarta.
Though nearly 90 percent of Indonesia's 210 million people are Muslim, Poso's population has an almost equal number of Christians and there are also a small number of Hindus, most of whom arrived from the island of Bali in the last three decades.
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