Indonesia beefs up security for holidays
INDONESIAN police yesterday announced plans to deploy some 155,000 personnel to secure the country during the Christmas and New Year holidays, a day after police thwarted plans for militant attacks.
Police on Wednesday foiled plans by an IS-linked group for a Christmas-time suicide bombing after they discovered a cache of bombs in a house on the outskirts of Jakarta, killing three suspected militants in the process.
Following the raids, the chief of national police Tito Karnavian said that security would be boosted at churches, entertainment venues and public gatherings during the Christmas and New Year celebrations across the sprawling archipelago.
“Police will beef up security after these [raids],” intensifying intelligence-gathering efforts and the monitoring of social media, national police spokesman Martinus Sitompul said.
Deployment of large security personnel at year-end celebrations is an annual exercise for police in the world’s most populous Muslim country.
The militants who were killed on Wednesday had planned to stab an officer at a police station and launch a suicide bomb attack around the Christmas holidays, police said. Four other suspected militants were also arrested in separate raids on Java and Sumatra the same day.
Wednesday’s raids came less than two weeks after police arrested four Islamic militants, including a female suicide bomber, in Bekasi on the outskirts of Jakarta. They were plotting to bomb one of the guard posts at the presidential palace.
Indonesia suffered a string of deadly homegrown attacks during the 2000s – including the 2002 Bali bombings which killed over 200 people.
A sustained crackdown has weakened many of the most dangerous extremist networks but there have been fears of a resurgence in militancy.