Police questioned more witnesses in the Bali backpack bombings yesterday after narrowly failing to capture a key suspect in a series of blasts in Indonesia over the past several years.
The death toll from the blasts one week ago has risen to 23 -- including the three suicide bombers who strolled into packed restaurants on the Indonesian island with explosives hidden in backpacks, police said.
A 20-year-old restaurant worker died late on Friday of internal bleeding said Wayan Sutarga, medical services director at Sanglah hospital in Denpasar. He was the 15th Indonesian victim of the blasts, which also killed four Australians and a Japanese and wounded 146.
Police have questioned a total of 152 witnesses over the past week in connection with the blasts, but no one has been arrested or charged, Soenarko Dhanu Artanto, National Police deputy spokesman told reporters yesterday.
Police narrowly missed catching Noordin Top, 35, during a pre-dawn raid in the central Java village of Purwantoro, Abdul Madjid, police chief in the city of Solo, told reporters late on Friday.
Noordin and fellow Malaysian Azahari bin Husin, identified by police and intelligence officials as leaders of the al-Qaeda-linked Jemaah Islamiah (JI) militant network, are leading targets of the search for those with possible ties to the Bali blasts.
But the two Malaysians have kept one step ahead of a massive hunt for years, moving constantly in densely populated areas of this sprawling nation of 220 million people and more than 10,000 islands.
JI seeks to create an Islamic state across broad swathes of Muslim Southeast Asia, experts say.
Madjid said police had information Noordin visited Bali near the time of the bombings, but it wasn't clear whether he was there when the blasts occurred.
A US trained anti-terror force called Detachment 88 took part in the raids, he said.
Police helicopters yesterday dropped thousands of leaflets with pictures of Top and Noordin on traditional markets throughout central Java. The leaflets said: "These are dangerous terrorists! If you see them, please report to the nearest police."
The two Malaysians were implicated in bombings in Bali three years ago that killed 202 people, and subsequent deadly attacks on a luxury hotel in Jakarta in 2003 and outside the Australian embassy in the Indonesian capital last year.
The US announced this week it was offering rewards of US$10 million and US$1 million respectively for information leading to the capture of Dulmatin and Umar Patek, two suspects in the 2002 Bali bombings.
The State Department said both were JI members and Dulmatin was an electronics specialist who had trained at al-Qaeda camps in Afghanistan.
Some police and experts say JI in its original form was largely destroyed by arrests and convictions after earlier attacks, and the group behind the latest attacks may be a new Islamic militant organization or a violent offshoot of JI.
Most Muslims in Indonesia, the world's most populous Muslim country, are moderate but militancy has grown in recent years.
Meanwhile, Central Java's Police Chief Major General Chairul Rasyid said authorities were close to identifying two of the three suicide bombers.
He also revealed that the wife of another top terror suspect -- Zulkarnaen -- made phone calls to the island days before the strike.
"Three days before the bombings last week, his wife made several phone calls to Bali," Madjid told reporters. "We have given the phone numbers that she contacted to the Bali police for them to trace them."
v
‘IN A DIFFERENT PLACE’: The envoy first visited Shanghai, where he attended a Chinese basketball playoff match, and is to meet top officials in Beijing tomorrow US Secretary of State Antony Blinken yesterday arrived in China on his second visit in a year as the US ramps up pressure on its rival over its support for Russia while also seeking to manage tensions with Beijing. The US diplomat tomorrow is to meet China’s top brass in Beijing, where he is also expected to plead for restraint as Taiwan inaugurates president-elect William Lai (賴清德), and to raise US concerns on Chinese trade practices. However, Blinken is also seeking to stabilize ties, with tensions between the world’s two largest economies easing since his previous visit in June last year. At the
UNSETTLING IMAGES: The scene took place in front of TV crews covering the Trump trial, with a CNN anchor calling it an ‘emotional and unbelievably disturbing moment’ A man who doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire outside the courthouse where former US president Donald Trump is on trial has died, police said yesterday. The New York City Police Department (NYPD) said the man was declared dead by staff at an area hospital. The man was in Collect Pond Park at about 1:30pm on Friday when he took out pamphlets espousing conspiracy theories, tossed them around, then doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire, officials and witnesses said. A large number of police officers were nearby when it happened. Some officers and bystanders rushed
Beijing is continuing to commit genocide and crimes against humanity against Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities in its western Xinjiang province, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in a report published on Monday, ahead of his planned visit to China this week. The State Department’s annual human rights report, which documents abuses recorded all over the world during the previous calendar year, repeated language from previous years on the treatment of Muslims in Xinjiang, but the publication raises the issue ahead of delicate talks, including on the war in Ukraine and global trade, between the top U.S. diplomat and Chinese
RIVER TRAGEDY: Local fishers and residents helped rescue people after the vessel capsized, while motorbike taxis evacuated some of the injured At least 58 people going to a funeral died after their overloaded river boat capsized in the Central African Republic’s (CAR) capital, Bangui, the head of civil protection said on Saturday. “We were able to extract 58 lifeless bodies,” Thomas Djimasse told Radio Guira. “We don’t know the total number of people who are underwater. According to witnesses and videos on social media, the wooden boat was carrying more than 300 people — some standing and others perched on wooden structures — when it sank on the Mpoko River on Friday. The vessel was heading to the funeral of a village chief in