Police link Islamic State to Jakarta bombings

JAKARTA: Indonesia’s anti-terrorism unit raided the home of a suspected suicide bomber yesterday as authorities linked attacks that killed three police officers at a Jakarta bus station a day earlier to the Islamic State (IS) militant group.

Six police officers and six civilians were also wounded in the twin blasts set off five minutes apart by two attackers in the Kampung Melayu area of the Indonesian capital late on Wednesday, police said.

The attack was the deadliest in Indonesia since January last year, when eight were killed, four of them attackers, after suicide bombers and gunmen attacked the capital.

“We must continue to keep calm (and) keep cool. Because ... we Muslims are preparing to enter the month of Ramadan for fasting,” President Joko Widodo said in a statement.

It was “highly likely” an IS-linked group was behind Wednesday’s attack, national police spokesman Awi Setyono said.

“There’s a link, but we’re still studying whether it’s an international network.”

Earlier, he told reporters that police were investigating whether the attackers had direct orders from Syria or elsewhere.

A law enforcement source, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said they may have been linked to Jemaah Ansharut Daulah, an umbrella organisation on a US State Department “terrorist” list that is estimated to have drawn hundreds of IS sympathisers in Indonesia.

Indonesia has suffered a series of mostly low-level attacks by IS sympathisers in the past 17 months.

Residents helped clean up debris yesterday at the East Jakarta bus terminal, littered with bloodstains and broken glass.

“After what happened in Manchester, in Marawi in the Philippines, maybe the cells here were triggered by the bombs and that lifted their passion to start bombing again,” Setyono told television station TVOne.

While most recent attacks in Indonesia have been poorly organised, authorities believe about 400 Indonesians have joined IS in Syria and could pose a more lethal threat if they come home.

Police said Wednesday’s attack had targeted officers, using pressure cookers packed with explosives.

Police have now become the “primary target” of militants in Indonesia, said Stanis Riyanta, a Jakarta-based security analyst.

Police raided the home of a suspected suicide bomber in the city of Bandung and said they had found a receipt for a pressure cooker at the blast site bought on Monday in the capital of the West Java province.

“We wanted to look for instructions at that location, or evidence ... linked to the Kampung Melayu incident,” national police spokesman Martinus Sitompul said. – Reuters