Updating this story, Muslim militants in eastern Indonesia burned down several hundred homes in an overnight attack on a mainly Christian area where 26 people were killed in three days of fighting.
The attacks on Christians in Maluku province, once known as the Spice Islands, continues with no end in sight, according to the Washington, D.C.-based human rights group International Christian Concern.
Maluku, which has been about half Christian and half Muslim, came under attack between 1999 and 2002 from a radical Islamic group called Laskar Jihad, or Army of Holy Warriors, which aimed to make Indonesia an Islamic state.
Many of its members have joined the al-Qaida-linked terror network Jemaah Islamiah, blamed for the 2002 Bali bombings and last year’s suicide attack on the Marriott Hotel in Jakarta.
Indonesia has the largest Muslim population in the world, with more than 180 million.