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| Southeast Asia |
| Sulawesi cafe boom may not be a family dispute anymore |
| 2004-01-19 |
| Indonesian police are investigating whether a bombing which killed four people in South Sulawesi province this month is linked to previous blasts. National police chief General Dai Bachtiar said: "For the Palopo bombing, we are currently studying it, whether it was done by the actors of the Bali blast or the JW Marriott or a local network in Makassar or Poso." Police are looking for two men suspected of placing the bomb under a table at a cafe at Palopo in South Sulawesi on January 10. Early Monday three hooded men threw a petrol bomb into a house in the Lamasi area 20 kilometers (12 miles) north of Palopo, injuring one man. "The three men were on motorcycles and threw the petrol bomb after the owner of the house directed a torch beam onto their faces. The bomb hit the leg of the owner’s son, causing burn injuries," said a police officer, Sergeant Rataba. He could not give a possible motive for the attack. The al Qaeda-linked Jemaah Islamiyah is blamed for bombings in Bali which killed 202 people in October 2002, the Marriott hotel blast last August which killed 12 people, and a string of other attacks in recent years. A bomb at a McDonald’s restaurant at Makassar in South Sulawesi in December 2002 killed three people. The Poso district in Central Sulawesi has suffered intermittent bombings during Christian-Muslim violence which began in 2000 and continues sporadically. Bachtiar, quoted by Detikcom online news service, also said police were investigating whether recent bombings including Palopo may be linked to two fugitive Malaysians called Azahari Husin and Noordin Mohammad Top. The pair are being hunted for both the Bali blasts and the Marriott bombing. "The police have also hunted the perpetrators of several bombings in various places and will determine whether those acts are linked to Azahari and Noordin or to local people," Bachtiar said. |
| Posted by:Dan Darling |