MEDAN, 20 July 2004 - An explosion killed one man and wounded two other people on Tuesday in Indonesia's North Sumatra province, police said. National police spokesman Paiman said the blast occured before dawn in a village in the South Binjai district, near the country's third-largest city of Medan. "It happened when people were still sleeping in a hut in the middle of fields far from anywhere. One man died in the incident," the police general said.
Antara national news agency reported the blast came from a bomb, but Paiman said police had yet to determine the cause. "We really can't make conclusions here. Our men are there but the location is hard to reach. We also want to know whether it came from inside or someone threw a device in," he said. The incident came a week after small explosions in the West Java city of Bandung spooked investors on the Jakarta Stock Exchange.
In recent years, small explosions have frequently been linked to gangland activity. Some of the bigger, more deadly blasts, including the October 2002 bombings in Bali that killed 202 people, have been blamed on Islamic militants. Indonesia is in the midst of a lengthy election period, with a presidential run-off due on September 20 and officials warning more bombings are possible.
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