President orders probe into Jakarta suicide blasts
Indonesia’s president ordered a thorough investigation yesterday of twin suicide bombings that targeted police, killing three officers, in the deadliest attack by suspected militants in the capital in a year.
The bombings on Wednesday night also injured five other police officers and five civilians.
President Joko “Jokowi” Widodo said he ordered police to “thoroughly investigate the networks of the perpetrators and hunt them to the roots”. He spoke from his hometown of Solo in Central Java province.
Muslim-majority Indonesia has carried out a sustained crackdown on militants since the 2002 Bali bombings by Al-Qaeda-affiliated radicals that killed 202 people. A new threat has emerged in the past several years from Islamic State group sympathisers.
Vice-National Police Chief Syafruddin, who uses one name, said an initial investigation into Wednesday’s blast showed there were two explosions by two suicide bombers near a bus terminal, where police were providing security for a parade.
Police said an anti-terror squad immediately raided two houses believed to be owned by the perpetrators in neighbouring provinces of Banten and West Java.
Police have identified the bombers as Ichwanul Nurul Salam, 40, and Ahmad Sukri, 32, both from West Java province, said Col Arif Makhfudiharto, chief of the West Java anti-terror squad.
“Police have taken their relatives for questioning and DNA tests,” Col Makhfudiharto said.
The attack was the deadliest in Jakarta since a suicide and gun strike in January 2016 that left four civilians and four assailants dead. Authorities have disrupted a number of other planned attacks since.
In February, police fatally shot a suspected militant in the West Java capital of Bandung after his bomb exploded in a vacant lot and he fled into a municipal building and set it alight.
Police identified him as a member of Jemaah Anshorut Daulah, a network of almost two dozen Indonesian extremist groups that formed in 2015 and pledges allegiance to IS group leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi.
JAD has been linked to numerous plots in Indonesia, including the 2016 Jakarta attack.
In March, police shot dead a suspected JAD member and wounded another as they tried to escape a raid. At least six other militants were arrested, including some accused of trying to establish a jihadist training camp in eastern Indonesia and suspected of having links with Abu Sayyaf militants in the southern Philippines.
Last month, police said they arrested three suspected militants who were accused of planning to attack a police station in East Java.
Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull told his Parliament yesterday that he had phoned Mr Jokowi to “offer our condolences and our resolute support to Indonesia as we condemn the murderous terrorist attack on civilians and police in Jakarta last night”.
Australia and Indonesia plan to jointly host an Asia-Pacific summit in August aimed at coordinating against the security threat posed by homegrown Islamic militants returning from battlefields in Syria and Iraq.