Indonesia province on alert after attack warnings

JAKARTA Feb 16 (Reuters) Security forces have been on highest alert in Indonesia's restive Central Sulawesi province following warnings militants may be planning attacks, the region's police chief said today.

The Australian government said earlier today it had credible information militants may be in advanced stages of planning attacks in Central Sulawesi, the scene of tension between Muslims and Christians.

''We have been on alert level 1 since last month when there were warnings of a shift in (militant) operations from Java to Central Sulawesi,'' provincial police chief Badrotin Haiti told Reuters.

Indonesia, the world's most populous Muslim country, has in recent years been hit by a series of bomb blasts blamed on Islamic militants.

Most attacks against Western targets have taken place in the capital, Jakarta, and on Bali, where a total of 92 Australians died in two separate bombings in 2002 and 2005.

Haiti said security forces had also intensified a search for illegal weapons in Poso, a provincial region beset by Muslim-Christian fighting.

More than 2,000 people from both religious communities were killed in three years of fighting before a peace pact was signed in 2001, but sporadic attacks mainly targetting Christians have continued since then.

Australia advised its citizens to avoid all government buildings and infrastructure in Central Sulawesi.

''Recent credible reports indicate that terrorists may be in the advance stages of planning attacks in Sulawesi,'' Australia's Department of Foreign Affairs said.

Poso has been tense since the execution of three Christian militants in September over their role in the massacres of Muslims at a boarding school in 2000.

In January, 14 people, one of them a policeman, were killed during raids that involved gunfire between security forces and suspected Islamic activists linked to Southeast Asia's main militant group Jemaah Islamiah.

Around 85 percent of Indonesia's 220 million people follow Islam, giving the country the world's largest Muslim population. Most Indonesian Muslims are moderates but there is a radical fringe that has been increasingly vocal and media-savvy.

REUTERS PB VC1028