Hope fades for landslide victims in Indonesia, more than 210 feared dead

CIJERUK, Indonesia -- Search and rescue workers raced Friday to reach victims of landslides that buried several Indonesian villages beneath tons of mud and rocks, but hopes of finding survivors were fading. More than 210 people were missing or feared dead.

Relatives looked on anxiously as bodies were pulled from the rubble days after pounding rain on the main island of Java unleashed landslides in Cijeruk and Jember, divided by hundreds of kilometers of mountainous terrain.

So far 149 corpses have been found, many of them bloated or decayed, and rescuers said they may have to halt their search in the next 24 hours.

President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono met with thousands of people left homeless by the disaster in Jember, stopping to talk to grieving mothers and children, and promising government assistance in rebuilding schools, bridges and roads.

"Let us pray for our brothers and sisters who perished and for those who lost their loved ones," he said.

Many were resigned to the fact that few of the missing would be found alive.

Niti Turmadi, 40, said her sister Hisah was going to the market when the mud, trees and rocks plowed down the hill flanking Cijeruk just before daybreak Wednesday, sweeping away everything in its path.

"She has not returned," said Turmadi, waiting with dozens of other grieving relatives beneath a blue tent that was erected next to a small mosque, as the dead were delivered one by one.

"I am quite sure her body will be found, so I'll keep waiting," she said.

Heavy tropical downpours cause dozens of landslides and flash floods each year in Indonesia, where millions of people live in mountainous regions and near fertile flood plains close to rivers.

So far 108 bodies have been found in Jember and another 41 have been recovered in Cijeruk. Dozens of people remain unaccounted for. (AP)

Bomb Blast Targeted Christian Indonesian

By ABDI MARIThe Associated Press

PALU, Indonesia -- A bomb ripped through a crowded meat market in an Indonesian province that has been plagued by sectarian violence, killing at least eight people Saturday and wounding 45, officials said. Many of the victims were believed to be Christians.

The bomb went off in a slaughterhouse that also sold meat directly to the public in the town of Palu on Sulawesi island. It was packed with people buying pork for Saturday night's New Year celebrations, said Brig. Gen. Oegroseno, the police chief of Central Sulawesi province.

The bomb appeared to be a homemade device, he said, loaded with ball bearings and nails to maximize the number casualties.

"The explosion was so loud, I couldn't hear for a couple of seconds," said Tega, a resident who lives nearby and uses only one name, like many Indonesians. "I ran out of my house and saw bodies lying around."

Television footage showed police carrying bloodied bodies into ambulances. One man, apparently unhurt, was holding his head in his hands and screaming. Hospital workers and intelligence officials said at least eight people died and Oegroseno said another 45 were wounded.

Authorities had repeatedly warned in recent days that al-Qaida-linked terrorists were plotting attacks in Indonesia over the Christmas and New Year's holidays, prompting the government to deploy thousands of troops to guard churches and places where foreigners gather.

President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono condemned the blast, and urged police to investigate whether it was linked to other attacks on Christians in the province earlier this year, said his spokesman Andi Mallerangang.

Indonesia is the world's most populous Muslim nation, and most people practice a moderate form of the faith. But attacks against Christians have increased in recent years amid a global rise in Islamic radicalism.

Central Sulawesi was the scene of fierce battles between Muslims and Christians in 2001 and 2002 that killed about 1,000 people, and violence has flared anew in recent months. Christians make up about half the population in Sulawesi.

In October, unidentified assailants beheaded three Christian high school girls in Poso, east of Palu. In May, two bombs in the Christian-dominated town of Tentena killed 20 people. Police have questioned several suspects in those attacks, but have not formally brought charges against anyone.

One Christian clergyman said Saturday he was losing patience.

"Whenever an incident takes place, senior officials ask us to tell the people to remain unprovoked," said Rinaldy Damanik, leader of the Synod Churches of Central Sulawesi. "When will the authorities be able to reveal the barbaric perpetrators in the province?"
Security officials and former militants told The Associated Press in recent interviews that terrorists linked to the Jemaah Islamiyah terror network were behind the renewed attacks on Christians on the island.

Jemaah Islamiyah, which has ties to al-Qaida, has been blamed for a series of bloody bombings in Indonesia since 2000, including two strikes on Bali that together killed 222 people, many of them foreigners. It is also accused in Christmas Eve church bombings five years ago that left 19 dead.

Maj. Gen. Firman Gani, the Jakarta police chief, said last week that Jemaah Islamiyah terrorists might use the holidays to retaliate for the November death of bomb-making expert Azahari bin Husin, who was gunned down in a police raid.

On Christmas Eve, bomb squads searched for explosives at churches in the capital Jakarta and its satellite cities, where thousands gathered to worship. Security forces also tightly guarded dozens of churches on Sulawesi.

Survivor tells of girls' beheadings

POSO: A thick scar running from the back of her neck to just under her right eye, the lone survivor of a machete attack in which three Christian girls were beheaded on the Indonesian island of Sulawesi has spoken for the first time of her terror.

"All I could do was pray to Jesus for his help," said 16-year-old Noviana Malewa, who fled the October attack with a gaping head wound. "I was streaming with blood."

Noviana, who now lives under police guard in the Christian town of Tentena, described how the girls were taking a short cut to school through jungle and plantations when they ran into at least five masked, black-clad men. Within seconds, three of the teenagers were beheaded -- fresh victims of violence that has turned the Indonesian island into yet another front in the conflict with terrorists.

As Noviana fled bleeding, the assailants collected her friends' heads, put them in black plastic bags and then dumped them in Christian parts of the small town of Poso, one on a porch, the other two on the street.

"They were killed as if they were chickens," said Hernius Morangki, showing a journalist the spot where his daughter was decapitated. "I keep asking myself: What were my daughter's sins?"

Muslim militants are blamed for the beheadings, the most gruesome yet in a campaign of terror against Christians on Sulawesi.

Muslim-Christian violence killed almost 1000 people on Sulawesi between 2000 and 2002 and attracted Muslim militants from across Indonesia, among them members of the terror group Jemaah Islamiah.

Despite a peace deal, bombings, shootings and other attacks on Christians have continued, especially around Poso.

Former fighters and security officials say the latest attacks are carried out by Muslim islanders bent on avenging their dead from the earlier conflict, and terrorists aiming to foment a new war.

"They want to see Poso become alive with the spirit of jihad again," said Fahirin Ibnu Achmad, an Afghan-trained militant who took part in the 2000-02 war. "It is easy to recruit people who have seen their relatives slaughtered," he said, claiming to have renounced violence after spells in prison for gun-running and taking part in an attack on a Christian village.

Sulawesi is one of several islands in what some call Southeast Asia's "triangle of terror" -- a porous region encompassing the insurgency-racked southern Philippines in the north and the Maluku archipelago, itself the scene of sectarian conflict, to the west. Also nearby is heavily Muslim southern Thailand, where a two-year insurgency has left more than 1100 people dead.

The Sulawesi war has never been credibly investigated, and only a few perpetrators have stood trial. The island's Muslim and Christian communities, each numbering about half the population of 12.5 million, nurture their own histories of the conflict, casting themselves as victims.

Christian-Muslim relations were generally harmonious until 2000, when fighting spread from the Malukus. Each side killed hundreds and burned down scores of villages, among them the hilltop hamlet where Noviana and her schoolmates lived.
AP