Some PKI members took refuge in an isolated region south of Blitar in East Java after the crackdown on the party. Among the leaders in Blitar were the Politburo member Rewang, the party theorist Oloan Hutapea and the East Java leader Ruslan Widjajasastra. Blitar was an underdeveloped area where the PKI had strong peasant support, and the military was unaware that the PKI had consolidated there. The PKI leaders were joined by Lieutenant Colonel Pratomo, the former commander of the Pandeglang military district in West Java, who helped provide military training for the local communists. Violence erupted in Blitar in March 1968, as local peasants attacked leaders and members of Nahdlatul Ulama (NU) in retaliation for the role it had played in anti-communist persecution; about 60 NU members were killed. According to Australian political scientist Harold Crouch, it was unlikely that the killings of NU members in Blitar had been ordered by the PKI leaders. The military became aware of the PKI enclave and crushed it by mid-1968.