Extra police sent to Indonesia town amid tension

JAKARTA, Oct 2 (Reuters) About 800 extra police and troops have been sent to Indonesia's Poso town due to inter-religious tension after last month's execution of three Christians for leading a mob that killed Muslims, police said today.

Four small explosions caused by home-made bombs rocked Poso in South Sulawesi province and a Christian mob torched a police station over the weekend, but there were no casualties, said provincial police spokesman Muhammad Kilat.

False rumours have been circulating that rival mobs had burned churches, mosques and an Islamic boarding school, he said.

''There are some groups who want to create chaos by spreading unfounded rumours,'' Kilat said. ''The truth is, the situation in Poso is calm.'' About 800 paramilitary police and soldiers from Jakarta and other parts of Sulawesi island had arrived in Poso to keep peace, he said.

Din Syamsuddin, the chairman of Indonesia's second-largest Muslim organisation, Muhammadiyah, appealed to Muslims and Christians in Poso not to be provoked by the rumours.

''We urged Muslims and Christian to exercise restraint. Such rumours could lead to widespread conflict, which would be catastrophic for both communities,'' he told a news conference in the capital, Jakarta.

Muslim-Christian clashes rocked Central Sulawesi from late 1998 to 2001, killing an estimated 2,000 before a peace accord took effect. There has been sporadic violence since.

The execution of three Christian men on September. 22 for leading a militia which killed about 200 Muslims prompted protests, some of them violent, by Christian communities.

The three militants were executed by a police firing squad despite appeals from Pope Benedict and rights groups.

Around 85 percent of Indonesia's 220 million people follow Islam, but some areas in eastern Indonesia have roughly equal proportions of Muslims and Christians.

Three Islamic militants are on death row for the 2002 Bali bombings that killed 202 people.

Their lawyers have said they would file a final appeal with the Supreme Court, arguing that the retroactive anti-terror legal provisions used to convict them had been annulled.

REUTERS LL PM1602