Protests, bombing add to Indonesia's woes

By staff and wire reports

JAKARTA, Indonesia -- On a day that underscored Indonesia's mounting instability, police fired teargas and beat students protesting fuel price increases and questioned 29 people over a powerful bomb explosion.

The latest violence erupted a little over a month before the country's top legislative assembly was set to hold impeachment hearings against President Abdurrahman Wahid.

But in a rare positive move for the battered economy, the government appeared ready to push aside the last hurdle blocking fresh loans and desperately needed blessing from the International Monetary Fund (IMF).

Earlier, five people were seriously injured in a blast around dawn Tuesday, which also destroyed much of a two-story building in a south Jakarta suburb and damaged homes nearby.

Police later found several unexploded devices in the building.

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"It was a high explosive bomb but at this stage we are still investigating the type of bomb, whether it was homemade or not," Jakarta police spokesman Anton Bahrul Alam told Reuters.

"We also found several unexploded bombs in a room next to the one where the exploded bomb was planted," Alam said.

The five wounded people have been taken to hospital.

Police were hunting the tenant of the room where the bomb exploded, Alam said, adding: "He is a student."

A series of bomb blasts has rocked Jakarta and other cities around the troubled archipelago in the past year, adding to the headaches facing the beleaguered administration of President Wahid.

Police fire teargas

Across the city, police fired teargas to disperse about 100 demonstrating students, some of whom were throwing rocks in protest against an average 30 percent fuel price rise imposed at the weekend.

The police also beat five students and threatened journalists, witnesses said.

At another university, students burned tyres to protest the price hike which the government imposed at the weekend to cut the cost of its massive fuel subsidies.

It was the second day that the authorities have used force to quell demonstrations in Jakarta.

Raising fuel prices has always been politically risky in the impoverished country, and were a key factor in riots which helped bring down former President Suharto in 1998.

Indonesia's main donors have long argued that the government, with a barely affordable budget deficit, must slash the massive cost of subsidies which make its gasoline and diesel prices among the world's cheapest.

Witnesses said one student was arrested following the clash near a central Jakarta university after students threw rocks at riot police.

Police later fired teargas at the students again as they grouped in front of a nearby hospital, witnesses said.

On Monday, police fired warning shots and teargas at more than 700 students at a protest in Jakarta over fuel prices. A dozen students were hurt in that clash.

The fuel price hike has already sparked price jumps in basic commodities across the troubled archipelago.

Reuters contributed to this report.