SULAWESI, Indonesia--Gunmen opened fire on a church in Poso, Sulawesi, Indonesia Easter Sunday, wounding seven people, according to the Associated Press.
Hundreds of police reinforcements flew to the island, 1,600 km northeast of Jakarta, in anticipation of renewed open fighting between Muslims and Christians. Violence erupted in 1999 there and about 1,000 people were killed.
More than 300 members of the Mobile Brigade paramilitary police arrived in the region. No one has been arrested in the shooting. Police have identified the attackers only as men in black uniforms armed with automatic weapons.
Two of the injured remain in the hospital with wounds that are not life-threatening.
Attacks last year against Christian villages were blamed on Jemaah Islamiah, the regional terror group linked to al-Qaeda. That group was also accused in the 2002 attacks on Bali island that killed 202 people.
Indonesia is the world's most populous Muslim nation, but Central Sulawesi has roughly equal numbers of Muslims and Christians. The two communities now live separately.
The religious conflict in Poso broke out in 1999, soon after a religious war erupted in the nearby Maluku islands.
The fighting increased because of Laskar Jihad, a Muslim militia reportedly set up by a hardline faction in the army following the overthrow of longtime dictator Suharto in 1998.





