Indonesian police evacuate citizens after bomb found

Indonesian police said they evacuated a neighborhood on the outskirts of the capital yesterday after discovering a bomb in a raid on suspected Islamic militants who were planning to attack the presidential palace. National Police spokesman Boy Rafli Amar said people living within a 300-meter (yard) radius of the boarding house that was raided were evacuated. Police explosive experts were at the scene.

Amar said two men and one woman were arrested. The bomb was encased in a pressure cooker, a police photograph broadcast on TV showed. Umar Surya Fana, the police chief of Bekasi, a Jakarta satellite city where the evacuated neighborhood is located, said the two men were arrested shortly after leaving the boarding house. The woman was arrested in the boarding house.

Fana said that the militants were monitored by the counterterrorism squad, and that police believed they had been planning to bomb the presidential palace during a guard-changing ceremony that is a tourist attraction in Jakarta. A will of the woman seized during the investigation stated her desire to take part in “amaliyah,” an Arabic term used by extremist groups for attacks or suicide bombings. Amar said the three who were arrested are suspected to be part of a militant network linked to a bombmaking lab raided last month in West Java province. Those arrested last month planned to bomb targets in Jakarta, including the parliament and the Myanmar Embassy. — AP