BEKASI, Indonesia, (Reuters) – Indonesian police have shot dead a man suspected to be leading Islamic militant Noordin Mohammad Top during raids in Central Java and were trying to identify his body, a police source said yesterday.
Separately, police said they had killed two suspected militants and found up to 500 kg of bombs during a raid on a house in the Bekasi area near the capital Jakarta.
Malaysian-born Top is a prime suspect thought to be behind the near simultaneous suicide attacks on two luxury Jakarta hotels last month.
The July 17 attacks on the JW Marriott and Ritz-Carlton killed nine and wounded 53, including Indonesians and foreigners, and broke a four-year lull when there had been no major attacks after police had arrested hundreds of militants.
Police have launched a series of raids since Friday and the police source, who is close to the investigation into the hotel attacks, told Reuters the man suspected to be Top was killed during a raid on a workshop in Temanggung in Central Java.
“He was shot dead at the workshop in Temanggung,” the source said, adding that raids in the area had led police to the house in Bekasi where bombs had been found.
Police were trying to defuse the bombs and a Reuters correspondent at the scene heard a loud blast from the cordoned off area.
“I think this is very significant. Hopefully the person in Temanggung is Noordin,” said national police spokesman Nanan Soekarna. He said two suspects believed to be involved in recruiting suicide bombers were still on the run.
National Police Chief Bambang Hendarso Danuri said police had captured three men in Central Java and three men in Jakarta during the raids.
He said the bombs appeared to have been prepared for use in a car bomb attack on “a very particular target”, but did not elaborate.
Soekarna said police had identified the two suicide bombers who carried out the hotel attacks — 19 year-old Danny Dwi Permana from Bogor in the Marriot attack and 28 year-old Nana Ihwa Maulana from Pandeglang in the Ritz-Carlton bombing.
Yesterday, police had said two men had been arrested in a workshop in a market in Temanggung and had led police to a house in the same area where there had been a shoot-out with suspected militants.
Police from Indonesia’s anti-terrorism unit Detachment 88 were still surrounding the remote house in rice fields where three to four suspected militants were believed to be holed up.
Intelligence officials say Top and fellow Malaysian Azahari Husin, a bomb-maker who was killed in a 2005 police raid, were leaders in the Jemaah Islamiah (JI) militant network, blamed for a series of bomb attacks in Southeast Asia since 2002.
Police have focused much of their search on Central Java, where Top was believed to have a network of sympathisers to help shelter him.
Top is believed to have planned previous bomb attacks on the JW Marriott in Jakarta in 2003, on the Australian embassy in Jakarta in 2004, and in Bali in 2005.
The attacks were reported to have been designed to scare off foreign tourists and businesses so JI could create a caliphate across Muslim-dominated areas of Southeast Asia.
President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono has vowed to track down the bombers.
