Two bombs strike market in Indonesia

JAKARTA, Indonesia – Two bombs exploded today at a busy market in central Indonesia, killing at least 20 people and wounding at least 40 in a volatile region marred for years by religious fighting, police said.

The twin blasts occurred in the morning in the Christian-dominated town of Tentena, a police official said in nearby Poso, a coastal town where fighting between Muslims and Christians has claimed hundreds of lives since 2000.

The official said two policemen were among the wounded.

Police in January discovered 60 homemade bombs stashed in an abandoned house in Poso, about 35 miles from Tentena.

Poso, about 1,000 miles northeast of the capital, was a major battleground in fighting between Christians and Muslims four years ago on Sulawesi, where about 1,000 people were killed and thousands of others displaced.

Large-scale clashes have died down, but over the last year the island has seen an increase in attacks and bomb blasts.

Indonesia is the world’s most populous Muslim nation, but central Sulawesi has roughly equal Muslim and Christian populations.