Indonesian police shot dead three suspected militants during two raids targeting a top militant wanted over the 2002 Bali bombings, police and a witness said yesterday.
Police sources said the raids in Pamulang in Banten Province were part of a series of assaults on a suspected Islamic militant group in Aceh Province targeting Dulmatin, a fugitive Indonesian member of militant group Jemaah Islamiyah.
The raids come ahead of a visit by US President Barack Obama on March 20 to March 22.
National Police spokesman Edward Aritonang said the suspect in the first raid was thought to be “linked with terrorist incidents that police were investigating” but police were still identifying the body.
A police source who was involved in the operation and who declined to be identified said police “strongly suspect it was Dulmatin.”
TV footage showed police carrying an orange body bag to an ambulance after the raid on a two-story building that housed a small Internet and copying business at street level.
Police said a second raid was conducted nearby about an hour later, targeting members of the same group. Two suspects were shot and two detained.
Metro TV showed footage of a motorbike lying on its side, which the suspects were believed to have tried to use to flee. It also said that a bomb had been found.
A Reuters photographer at the scene saw two body bags being carried away by police.
Dulmatin is wanted over the 2002 Bali bombings.
Indonesia’s counterterrorism unit, Detachment 88, has launched a series of nationwide raids following the discovery of a militant Islamic training camp in Aceh last month. Books on Jihad, rifles and military uniforms were found during the raids in which 19 suspected members of the group were detained in Aceh and Java.
Dulmatin was thought to be in the Philippines working with the Abu Sayyaf group, said Noor Huda Ismail, an Indonesian expert on radical Islamist groups.
“It would be a major blow for the violent movement in Indonesia if it was Dulmatin. However, it would also send a disturbing signal to us that there are many terrorists who manage to enter Indonesia from abroad,” Ismail said.
Ismail said that Dulmatin had the capability to succeed Noordin Mohammad Top, a Malaysian-born militant and bombmaker killed by police last year during a raid in central Java.
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