JAKARTA, May 28: Two bombs exploded on Saturday in a busy market on Indonesia’s Sulawesi island, killing 22 people and wounding almost 60 others in the worst attack in the country since the October 2002 Bali bombings. Police in Jakarta said the attack bore hallmarks of militants behind a string of other atrocities in Indonesia, including the Bali blasts in which 202 mainly Western tourists died.

The latest bombs were detonated in the centre of the Christian-dominated town of Tentena in the island’s Central Sulawesi province, which has been a flashpoint of sectarian violence in recent years.

People were rushing to help victims of the first bomb when the second explosion struck outside a police station 15 minutes later. A Christian cleric and an infant were among those killed.

“The first bomb was placed to attract the crowd’s attention so that they would gather in the area and become the target of the second bomb,” said First Inspector Adam, a policeman on duty in the nearby city of Poso.

Witnesses said the explosions punched out the windows of surrounding buildings and scattered shards of metal that left a police officer among the wounded.

A medic at the hospital in Tentena, 2,000 kilometres northeast of Jakarta, said they were struggling to deal with the casualties due to limited supplies and a shortage of trained staff.

“Around 20 people were badly wounded and they are quite weak. Many of them suffered wounds in their internal organs,” said Sofia Latuperisa, a dentist helping the injured.

National police spokesman Anang Budiharjo said no foreigners were hurt but the nature of the incident suggested the hand of Azahari Husin, a fugitive Malaysian bombmaker allegedly allied to the Jemaah Islamiyah militant group.

Jemaah Islamiyah is a Southeast Asian extremist organization said to have connections with Osama bin Laden’s Al-Qaeda network.

“I’m not saying at the moment that this is the work of Azahari’s group. However, since he has been at large for so long it is possible that he has recruited new members in that area,” Budiharjo said.

“We do not rule out that possibility because the patterns, the use of bombs, are the trademarks of that group.”

National police chief Da’i Bachtiar said this week that Azahari was suspected to be behind a series of bomb threats to oil firms on the island of Borneo, to the west of Sulawesi.

Further police security warnings on Thursday prompted the United States to shutter its diplomatic missions across the world’s largest Muslim country, while security was stepped up other potential extremist targets.

Azahari is wanted in connection with the Bali bombings, a car bombing that killed 12 people at Jakarta’s JW Marriott hotel in 2003 and an attack last year on the Australian embassy in which 10 people died.

Ken Conboy, a security analyst in Jakarta, however doubted that Jemaah Islamiyah would pick such a remote target, saying the incident was more likely to be an unusually violent manifestation of ongoing troubles in Sulawesi.

“It seems to me that JI likes to get more bang for its bucks. They go for the really flashy stuff in places that the media can cover pretty quickly,” he said.

Harris Ringga, a local government spokesman in the nearby town of Poso, described the bombings as “an act of terrorists”, adding that the explosive devices were homemade but powerful enough to be heard 12 kilometres away.

Harris said there were 21 fatalities from the blast, while Indonesia’s Vice President Yusuf Kalla said 22 people had perished.

Mr Kalla, who was due to visit Tentena on Sunday, said he believed the attack was the work of those behind earlier sectarian violence in the nearby town of Poso and Indonesia’s eastern Ambon city.—AFP