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Hundreds flee to forests to escape Molucca violence

JAKARTA: Indonesia's military said on Wednesday it was searching for hundreds of people hiding in forests to escape violence between Christians and Muslims in the eastern spice islands.

"We are searching for them to give them medical aid and to evacuate them to safer places," military spokesman Lieutenant-Colonel Iwa Budiman told Reuters from Ambon, capital of the Moluccas.

The official Antara news agency, quoting aid workers, said 300 people emerged from the forests on Buru, west of Ambon, on Wednesday.

A sociologist with contacts in the large northern island of Halmahera said 18 Muslims were killed in clashes there on Tuesday.

Thamrin Amal Tomagola, a Moluccan-born sociologist from the state University of Indonesia, said the fighting broke out at dawn on Tuesday. "There were casualties from the Christian side, too, but we don't have the figure," he said.

More than 1,500 people have died in the past year in religious clashes in the once-idyllic region in Indonesia's worst religious war. Human rights groups put the toll in the thousands.

Life on Ambon island, 2,300 km east of Jakarta, was slowly returning to normal. The two largest islands, Seram and Halmahera, remained dangerous but under control, Budiman said.

Military officials said they had no reports of fresh fighting in the region on Wednesday.

Fears are mounting that the spice islands violence, out of control for a year and getting worse in places, could spread across the diverse archipelago, home to more than 300 ethnic groups.-Reuters