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At Least 10 Dead, 71 Injured In Christmas Eve Blasts Across Indonesia
JAKARTA (AFP) - At least 10 people were killed and 71 injured in a rash of suspected bomb explosions outside churches across Muslim-majority Indonesia Sunday, as the faithful celebrated Christmas Eve mass inside, hospitals and police said.
In Jakarta, the national capital, the blasts rocked the Roman Catholic cathedral, three Roman Catholic and one Protestant church, killing three people and injuring 31, police and hospital staff said.
No one has accepted responsibility for the blasts.
Within hours, regional governors were huddled in meetings with police chiefs and local and religious leaders in a frantic attempt to defuse tension ahead of the major Muslim holiday of Eid Al Fitr next week, the state Antara news agency and national radio said.
Inter-religious conflict in Indonesia has so far been largely restricted to the Maluku island chain, where more than 5,000 people have died, but there is now fear that this bloodshed could spread across the archipelago.
More people were killed in blasts outside churches in East and West Java and on Sumatra, people said.
The three who died in the blast in Sukabumi, West Java, included a baby, said a worker at Sukabumi hospital, 100 kilometers (62 miles) southeast of Jakarta. He added that eleven wounded were admitted.
Three others were killed in a blast outside a Protestant church in Pekanbaru, Riau province on Sumatra island, and one in a church blast in Mojokerto in East Java, police said.
"They are just explosions. We cannot not yet at this stage say what they are," national police spokesman Salah Saaf said when asked to confirm the blasts were bombs.
Saaf said nine witnesses had been questioned.
But a reporter at the Jakarta cathedral a few minutes after midnight quoted an unnamed senior police detective as saying bomb squads were trying to defuse "another unexploded bomb" outside the right wall.
Inside, two hours after the blast there, the 800-strong congregation continued to sing Christmas carols, along with an overflow crowd of 300 singing under a tent on the left hand side, the reporter said.
Police in Pekanbaru, Riau, said that four of the 10 injured in that blast were their own officers, who were guarding the church at the time.
The first blast in Jakarta took place in front of the Santa Maria church in East Jakarta around 8:00 pm (1300 GMT), before another one 40 minutes later at a bus stop in front of the Saint Yosef church, a sergeant of the East Jakarta Police said.
In East Jakarta, an explosion rocked the Oikoumene Christian Protestant church, injuring two people and damaging a van, said East Jakarta police.
And four successive blasts rocked the street outside the Kanisius Cathedral School chapel, one kilometer southeast of the cathedral, damaging seven cars, SCTV television said.
A bag suspected of containing a bomb was found hanging in a tree in the compound of the Anglican Church near the Kanisius chapel, police said.
Police also said three more were injured in a blast outside a church in Bekasi, just south of Jakarta.
Three churches in Mojokerto were rocked by explosions, local police superintendent Ridho Waseso said, which killed one person and injured another four, East Java Chief Inspector General Sutanto said. Two suspected bombs there had been sent for analysis, the SCTV added.
Blasts also shook two churches and a Christian cemetery in Mataram, the main town in Lombok island, east of resort island Bali, a West Lombok district policeman in Mataram said. No injuries were reported.
In North Sumatra, a solice Sergeant said that 11 homemade bombs had been found near the homes of priests in the city of Medan.
And on the island of Batam, south of Singapore, a blast exploded in front of the Pentecostal church, injured at least 12 people, according to state radio.
Indonesia, with 210 million people - some five percent or 10.5 million of whom are Christian - has one of the world's largest Muslim population, but is not an Islamic state.
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