Central Sulawesi Police hunt for minivan bomber

Central Sulawesi Police hunt for minivan bomber

Eva C. Komandjaja, The Jakarta Post/Jakarta

The police are currently focusing their search on a suspicious
passenger who alighted from a minibus minutes before a bomb went
off in Parigi, Central Sulawesi, on Thursday seriously injuring
one man.

The explosion that detonated in the bus near Toboli village on
Thursday was small, although it seriously injured one person
sitting next to it. A 54-year-old man, Murdani, is currently
receiving medical treatment at the Parigi Hospital for first and
second-degree burns all over his body.

National Police spokesman Insp. Gen. Aryanto Boedihardjo said
on Friday that other passengers in the bus suspected a man who
got off just before the explosion was the bomber.

"We have questioned the witnesses, who are mostly passengers
of the bus, and they all suspected a man with curly hair wearing
a jacket to be the bomber since he sat on a seat where the bomb
went off after he got off," Aryanto said.

"The witnesses said that the man sat on the seat and got off
the bus just before the explosion shook the bus so it was
possible for him to put the bomb under the seat," Aryanto said.

He said that the suspicious passenger got in the bus from
Mamboro bus terminal and got off somewhere in Toboli village.
Eleven people were on the bus that was traveling from the
predominantly Muslim provincial capital of Palu to the largely
Christian town in Tentena.

Police said their investigations revealed the bomb was a low-
explosive home-made device using black powder -- a mixture of
sodium nitrate, charcoal and sulphur -- and ball-bearings. The
police also found detonators, a fuse and nine-volt battery on the
bus.

Nine volt batteries were also used in previous larger-scale
explosions such as in Bali in early October as well as other bomb
attacks in Jakarta. According to convicted 2002 Bali bomber, Ali
Imron, the nine-volt battery was one of Azahari's bomb
trademarks.

Azahari bin Husin and Noordin Mohd. Top are the country's two
most-wanted terrorists, believed to be the masterminds behind a
series of explosions in the country.

However, the police refused to link the recent explosion in
Central Sulawesi to others that have occurred in other parts of
the archipelago, saying it was too early to make any conclusions.

"We will try to track down this man first, since we already
knew when he got off from the bus and where he started and we
also learned about his characteristics. Hopefully this would
help us to find him," he said.

Poso has been a flash-point of sectarian clashes between
Muslims and Christians that left more than 1,000 people dead in
two years of bloodshed up to 2001.

Until August this year, at least four bombs -- two of them in
Poso city -- have exploded. The bombings at Tentena market in May
this year that killed 21 people were the second deadliest in
Indonesia since the Bali bombings of 2002 that killed 202 people
and the recent Bali bombs that killed 23 and injured more than
150.

In May, two bombs ripped through a crowded market in the
predominantly Christian area of Tentena, killing 21 civilians and
injuring 70 others.