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JI terror suspect eludes capture in Philippines

One of Southeast Asia's most wanted fugitives, a key suspect in the 2002 Bali bombings, again eluded capture in the southern Philippines yesterday, military officials said.

Dulmatin, an Indonesian national who is a senior member of the Jemaah Islamiyah (JI) militant network, fled a safe house on remote Simunul island just hours before crack Philippine forces raided the location, a spokesman said.

A joint team of marines, police, and military intelligence agents only found four children aged two to nine, believed to be Dulmatin's children, regional military chief Lieutenant-General Eugenio Cedo said.

four children

Lieutenant-Colonel Ariel Caculitan, spokesman for the Philippine Marines, said security forces tracking JI militants on Simunul found the four children, aged from two to nine years.

"We were acting on intelligence information, but we don't want to confirm the presence of Dulmatin in the area," Caculitan told reporters.

"Our troops will turn over the children to government social workers and the immigration office. We want them to be reunited with their mother who returned to Indonesia after she was caught last year in the south."

Dulmatin, who has a US$10 million bounty on his head from the US State Department, was a senior member of JI, a regional terror network that seeks an Islamic superstate in parts of Southeast Asia, intelligence officials say.

Caculitan said an Armalite rifle and unspecified equipment were seized during the raid, but did not mention anyone being apprehended other than the four children.

Philippine security officials have said Dulmatin and another suspect in the Bali bombing, Umar Patek, were part of a group of up to 10 JI members hiding on the southern island of Jolo and training Abu Sayyaf members in building crude bombs.

Abu Sayyaf has been blamed for the worst militant attack in the south of the mainly Roman Catholic country, the 2004 bombing of a ferry near Manila which killed more than 100 people.

The 2002 bombing on Indonesia's resort island of Bali, blamed on JI, killed 202 people, many of them foreign tourists.

islamic militants

Since August, about 8,000 soldiers have been battling 400 Abu Sayyaf rebels on Jolo to flush out several Islamic militants who have fled from crackdowns in neighboring Southeast Asian states Malaysia, Indonesia and Singapore.

Hermogenes Ebdane, a former national police chief who was named as defense secretary in February, said the security forces had already dismantled JI's training camps in the south and expressed confidence the militants would soon fall into government hands.

"They're now on the run after they were forced out from their camps in central Mindanao," Ebdane told foreign correspondents yesterday, adding the largest Muslim rebel group talking peace with government has been cooperating in tracking down the militants.
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