JAKARTA, Indonesia (AP) - Gunmen on a speedboat opened fire on a ferry carrying Christians in Indonesia's eastern Maluku islands on Wednesday, killing 10 people, witnesses and medical officials said.
The victims were fish and vegetable traders traveling to an early morning market in Ambon, the provincial capital. The gunmen were traveling from a Muslim area of town and were armed with automatic weapons, witnesses said.
Last week, seven Christians were killed in an explosion on a boat in the same waters.
The latest bloodshed comes after a six-month period of relative calm in the archipelagic province, 1,600 miles east of Jakarta.
Fighting between Muslims and Christians in the Malukus first erupted in January 1999. Government officials said at least 9,000 people from both communities have died in the conflict, which has devastated large parts of the province of 2 million people.
Shortly after Wednesday's attack, hundreds of angry Christians rallied outside the governor's office in protest, forcing all Muslim employees there to flee the building, witnesses said.
Ambon police chief Lt. Col. Novianto, who like many Indonesians goes by a single name, confirmed that 10 people were killed. Three of the victims were women, medical officials said.
Ambon is the capital of the string of islands that make up Maluku province. The area was known as the Spice Islands during Dutch colonial times.
Indonesia is the world's most populous Islamic nation. About 85 percent of its 205 million people are Muslim. However, in Maluku the balance between Christians and Muslims is almost even.
The local government blames a Muslim paramilitary group from the main island of Java for fomenting the violence in Maluku and on neighboring Sulawesi island, where at least 1,000 people have been killed in a similar sectarian conflict.
Government-sponsored peace talks between Muslims and Christians in central Sulawesi province opened in the southern town of Malino, 780 miles northeast of Jakarta. About 50 representatives of the two communities met with government mediators.