Soldiers and volunteers used their bare hands on Thursday to search for survivors buried beneath tonnes of mud and rock after landslides wiped out several Indonesian villages, leaving more than 210 people dead or missing, officials said. Twenty-six bodies have been recovered since Wednesday.
About 200 people were feared dead in a landslide triggered by heavy rains that buried scores of houses in Indonesia’s Central Java province on Wednesday, police said as rescuers scrambled to find survivors. ”We suspect there are about 200 people in 120 houses buried in the mud,” local chief of police operations Budi said.
A huge banner points the way to Indonesia’s latest tourist attraction: the shattered remains of the house where Azahari Husin, one of Asia’s most-wanted terrorists, spent his last hours. "From the first day until today, it’s been non-stop. And it’s been 42 days," 35-year-old Danny says as he does a brisk trade hawking T-shirts.
Rescuers on Tuesday searched through debris and mud for victims of flash floods that inundated villages in Indonesia’s East Java as the death toll rose to 57, officials said. Environmentalists have blamed the disaster on rampant illegal logging on the island of Java, one of the world’s most densely populated.
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/ 28 December 2005
The killing of Malaysian bomb maker Azahari Husin by Indonesian police may spark revenge attacks against the country’s president, Indonesia’s spy chief warned on Wednesday. Syamsir Siregar said that before his death, Azahari, and his compatriot Noordin Mohammad Top — who is still at large — had recruited an unspecified number of trained militants.
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/ 27 December 2005
Indonesia’s Aceh rebels formally disbanded their armed wing on Tuesday, fulfilling one of the most crucial elements of a tsunami-inspired peace plan to end one of Asia’s longest separatist conflicts. The move paves the way for the group to transform itself into a political party.
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/ 26 December 2005
A year after the tsunami laid waste to Aceh, tens of thousands of people still live in a vast archipelago of townships made of scrap wood spit back by the sea. Along the coast of the Indonesian province, little remains of villagers but swampland and ankle-high rubble.
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/ 26 December 2005
Masked, black-clad and brandishing machetes, the attackers sprang from behind a screen of tall grass and pounced on the four Christian girls as they walked to school. Within seconds, three of the teenagers were beheaded — fresh victims of violence that has turned the Indonesian island of Poso into yet another front in the terrorist wars.
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/ 24 December 2005
Some will light candles after travelling long distances to where loved ones were snatched; others might offer simple prayers. But across nations ravaged by the tsunami, all will remember. Memorials will on Monday mark the one-year anniversary of the day the ocean rose and smashed into Indian Ocean coastlines.
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/ 23 December 2005
It doesn’t matter whether you’ve been naughty or nice this year, Santa Claus is still going to check your car for bombs at one ritzy Indonesian hotel this Christmas, where a sleighful of Santas have been descending on cars as they enter the grounds in a bid to thwart potential Islamic extremist attacks.
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/ 12 December 2005
Sick of being stuck in gridlocked traffic or jostled in overcrowded buses, Jakartans wonder whether their public transport dream, the city’s first monorail, is ever going to become reality. One-and-a-half years after its ground-breaking, the only sign that the saga-riddled project is under way is a few concrete and steel shoots poking into the polluted main street of South Jakarta’s business district.
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/ 6 December 2005
A catlike creature photographed by camera traps on Borneo Island is likely to be a new species of carnivore, the World Wildlife Fund said on Tuesday. If confirmed, the animal — which has dark red fur and a long, bushy tail — would be first new carnivore species discovered on the island since 1895, when the Borneo ferret-badger was found, the fund said.
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/ 1 December 2005
One year later, officials still aren’t exactly sure how many people died in the Indian Ocean tsunami, but a tally of conservative government figures puts the number of dead and missing at more than 216 000 in 11 countries. In Indonesia and Sri Lanka, different agencies within the same governments disagree about the numbers.
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/ 17 November 2005
A hooded Islamic militant thought to be one of Asia’s most wanted men has warned Western nations to expect more attacks in a video found in his slain colleague’s hideout and aired in Indonesia. A balaclava-clad man, believed by Vice President Jusuf Kalla to be Malaysian Noordin Mohammad Top, threatened Western nations in a recording recovered from the bomb-packed hideout.
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/ 1 November 2005
Dozens of investigators combed the hills with specially trained dogs on Tuesday to search for any clues left by masked assailants who beheaded three Christian school girls. Authorities worry that Saturday’s attack outside the Indonesian town of Poso, a town long plagued by Muslim-Christian violence, could spark retaliatory acts just as relations between the two communities are improving.
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/ 28 October 2005
An Australian model accused of possessing ecstasy pills in Indonesia’s Bali resort island went on trial Friday and faces lengthy imprisonment if convicted. Appearing before the Denpasar district court wearing a Muslim veil, Michelle Leslie heard prosecutors accusing her of possessing two ecstasy tablets during a police raid on a party in Bali’s Jimbaran area in August.
Indonesian police came close on Friday to arresting one of Asia’s most-wanted terror suspects, a police source said, as the hunt for the Bali bombing masterminds intensified. The suicide bombers could prove hard to trace, police said, because they come from a new generation of attackers.
Indonesian police on Thursday pledged to beef up security in Bali after last weekend’s deadly bomb blasts, as they hunted for leads in the attacks blamed on Islamic militants. The promise came amid concern about visitors returning to the tourism-dependent island, hit on Saturday for the second time in three years by deadly extremist attacks.
For many survivors of Bali’s devastating 2002 nightclub bombings, last weekend’s suicide blasts have reignited painful memories and fears they have struggled to suppress. ”I lived it once again. After a long time, I feel the trauma again,” said Gatot Indro Suranto, who was hit with the full force of the car bomb that exploded in the Kuta tourist district on October 12 2002.
Just days after the deadly Bali bombings, the sites of Saturday’s attacks have become the latest "must-see" attraction for foreign tourists on the Indonesian resort island. "We wanted to see what it is like," said Kris Clape, a 35-year-old blonde Australian, who was dropped by taxi in front of the now closed entrance to Kuta Square.
Two men have been detained for questioning over the suicide bombings at three crowded restaurants on Indonesia’s Bali island, police said on Tuesday. Indonesian officials earlier said the near-simultaneous bombings that killed 22 people and apparently were planned by two Malaysians — still at large.
The video images are grainy but the effect is chilling. A man in a black T-shirt calmly crosses the Raja restaurant in Bali, where friends and family are eating, drinking and chatting away, enjoying a festive Saturday night out. He walks back toward the kitchen, and then comes the boom of an explosion. And then there are screams and panic.
Indonesian police on Monday were hunting the suspects who helped suicide bombers attack the resort of Bali, leaving at least 19 dead and raising fears of more violence from Islamic militants. Authorities said Saturday’s carnage bore the hallmarks of a group linked to al-Qaeda, Jemaah Islamiyah, that has waged a bloody campaign against Western interests since 1999.
The latest bombings on Bali are believed to be the work of three suicide bombers and bore the hallmarks of the Jemaah Islamiyah extremist network, Indonesia’s anti-terrorism chief said on Sunday. Powerful explosions ripped through three crowded restaurants on Bali late on Saturday, killing at least 26 people.
Powerful bombs ripped through three crowded restaurants on the Indonesian resort island of Bali on Saturday, killing at least 25 people and wounding more than 100 — the second time terrorists have brought carnage to the tropical paradise in three years. Witnesses reported seeing dismembered bodies at the scene, many of them foreigners.
Hundreds of people rallied in a third day of demonstrations across Indonesia on Saturday to protest a government decision to more than double fuel prices to keep an economic crisis at bay. Hundreds of demonstrators took to the streets in more than 10 cities in the islands of Java, Lombok and Sulawesi on Saturday.
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/ 21 September 2005
For many poor residents of Indonesia’s densely populated capital, Jakarta, having chicken on the dinner table is a luxury that seldom comes. Now many are forcing themselves to decline the rare treat of fried or curried chicken amid a widening bird-flu outbreak and lack of public information about the virus.
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/ 7 September 2005
Indonesia on Wednesday played down fears that pirates could link up with terrorists to wreak havoc in the Malacca Strait but pledged to do its part to ensure security in the vital shipping lane. Foreign Minister Hassan Wirayuda, speaking at the opening of a two-day meeting with Singapore and the International Maritime Organisation, said pirates and terrorists had different goals.
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/ 6 September 2005
Indonesian police raiding the house of a man suspected of fraud discovered the mummified body of an infant girl hidden inside an unused aquarium, a report said on Tuesday. The dried-up body was found covered in lime powder inside a glass box hidden at the bottom of the empty aquarium in the house in Bandung.
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/ 6 September 2005
Investigators on Tuesday hunted for clues in the wreckage of the crashed jetliner in northern Indonesia as the airline ruled out terrorism in the disaster that killed at least 150 people. The Mandala Airlines Boeing 737-200 plunged into a suburb of Medan on Monday, seconds after taking off from the city’s airport.
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/ 5 September 2005
A Boeing 737-200 jetliner crashed on Monday into a densely populated suburb of the northern Indonesian city of Medan and burst into flames minutes after take-off, killing at least 137 people. The Mandala Airlines jet bound for Jakarta was carrying 117 passengers and crew when it slammed into the ground. At least 15 passengers survived.
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/ 5 September 2005
At least five passengers survived the crash of the Mandala Airlines Boeing 737-200 in the Indonesian city of Medan on Monday, the search and rescue agency said. The plane crashed into a crowded neighbourhood just outside the airport’s perimeter shortly after take-off.