JAKARTA (Reuters) - Indonesian Vice President Hamzah Haz said on Friday a home-made bomb that killed four young women in the strife-torn eastern city of Ambon was not linked to a long-running religious conflict but the work of provocateurs.
The bomb exploded on Thursday near a sports field used by rival Muslim and Christian communities. Witnesses said the bomb was left in a sack near where joggers usually put their bags.
"There is a party that doesn't like to see Indonesia stable -- maybe from within our circle, maybe from abroad," Haz told reporters.
Police said three Christians and a Muslim were killed in the blast, one of them dying of her wounds early on Friday. Two other Muslims were critically injured.
Ambon, which lies some 2,300 km east of Jakarta and is the hub of the Moluccas islands, has been racked by religious violence which is estimated to have killed more than 5,000 people since 1999.
Both sides signed a peace deal in February but tension remains high. In late July a bomb blast in Ambon wounded 53 people but police then also ruled out religion as a motive.
Indonesia has been hit by a series of violent incidents in the past week, bad publicity for a giant nation which is struggling to lure back foreign investors after the Asian financial crisis of the late 1990s.
On Thursday, separatist rebels in restive Aceh province ambushed a convoy of vehicles carrying several top security and government officials, leaving a police commander critically injured.
Officials said the convoy, which included a car carrying Aceh governor Abdullah Puteh, was attacked by more than a dozen gunmen in the northern rebel stronghold of Lhokseumawe.
"We are still chasing the attackers who ambushed the governor's convoy yesterday. We estimated there were between 15 and 30 attackers," military spokesman Zainal Mutaqin told Reuters by telephone from Lhokseumawe, some 1,600 km northwest of Jakarta.
He said North Aceh Regional Police Chief Sunardi had been critically injured in the attack.
Rebels from the Free Aceh Movement (GAM), who have been fighting for independence since 1976, said they carried out the ambush.
The attack comes amid plans for a fresh round of peace talks between Jakarta and GAM representatives scheduled for this month.
In Indonesia's other separatist hotspot, the remote eastern province of Papua, two U.S. teachers and an Indonesian were killed in an ambush on Saturday near a mine operated by U.S.-based Freeport McMoRan Copper and Gold Inc.