Communal clashes have erupted in eastern Indonesia, killing 14 people and injuring dozens in a grim reminder of the tensions gripping the world's largest archipelago, police and official media said yesterday.
Seven villagers were killed on the holiday island of Lombok, near the world famous resort island of Bali, in fighting that broke out on Wednesday following a local dispute, police said.
"At least seven people have been killed since yesterday. The villagers were fighting until 3 o'clock in the morning using firearms," Police Captain Frans Nois said by telephone from the island's main town of Mataram.
Capt. Nois insisted that the clashes, which took place near Mataram, were not sparked by religious or ethnic differences, triggers behind much of the violence that has hobbled Indonesia since it plunged into crisis three years ago.
Mataram, 1,075 km (670 miles) east of Jakarta, was still tense, police said.
Another seven people have been killed in recent days following brawling between villages in the district of Gorontalo on North Sulawesi, the official Antara news agency reported.
Dozens more had been injured while a number of vehicles, houses and shops had been destroyed in clashes provoked by a dispute between rival youths, police were quoted as saying.
That area, 2,000 km north-east of Jakarta, was also still tense.
Lombok and parts of Sulawesi were once popular tourist destinations.
Widespread riots in Indonesia in July 1988, in which more than 1,000 were killed in Jakarta, brought the country's tourism industry to a virtual standstill amid a crippling economic crisis.
While Bali and large areas of the country have remained peaceful, more than 5,850 people have died in two years of violence in the Maluku islands and Aceh province.
Separatist violence has also erupted in the easternmost province of Irian Jaya (West Papua).