Elite police squad hunt the Jakarta bomb team
President ordered investigators to get to the root of terrorist network that was behind suicide blasts near bus terminal
JAKARTA // Indonesia’s president ordered a thorough investigation into the twin suicide bombings near a Jakarta bus terminal on Wednesday.
Three policemen were killed and six officers and five civilians injured in the attack, which officials suspect were carried by militants with links to ISIL.
President Joko Widodo said he had ordered police to “thoroughly investigate the networks of the perpetrators and hunt them to the roots” and called for people to “stay calm and remain united”.
The police’s elite antiterrorist squad, Densus 88, is leading the investigation.
The bombers were identified as Ichwanul Nurul Salam, 40, and Ahmad Sukri, 32, both from West Java. The head of the province’s antiterrorist squad said their relatives had been detained for questioning and DNA tests.
National police spokesman Setyo Wasisto said nails, buckshot and aluminium flakes found at the scene suggested the bombs were similar to a pressure-cooker bomb that exploded in a vacant lot in February in Bandung, the West Java provincial capital.
The suspected bomber in that attack fled into a municipal building and set it alight before he was fatally shot by police.
West Java police spokesman Yusri Yunus said Salam’s wife told investigators the bombs in Wednesday’s attack and the February blast were assembled by a militant called Agus.
“We are now looking for Agus, who is still at large,” Mr Yunus said. “He’s dangerous.”
Yesterday, police raided the homes of two suspects in West Java – one in Bandung city and another in the nearby city of Cimahi.
Relatives of both men, whose identities have not been released, were taken in for questioning.
Police identified the man killed in February as a member of Jemaah Ansharut Daulah, a network of almost two dozen Indonesian extremist groups that formed in 2015 and pledged allegiance to ISIL leader Abu Bakr Al Baghdadi. Jad members are believed to have contact with Bahrun Naim, an Indonesian fighting with ISIL in Syria, and the group has been linked to plots in Indonesia, including the attack in Jakarta in January last year.
In March, one suspected Jad member was shot dead by police and another was wounded as the pair tried to escape a raid.
At least six other militants were arrested, including some who were accused of trying to establish a militant training camp in eastern Indonesia and were suspected of having links with Abu Sayyaf militants in the southern Philippines.
Last month, police said, three suspected militants accused of planning an attack on a police station in East Java were arrested.
Indonesia has long struggled with extremist militancy and has suffered a series of attacks in the past 15 years.
In one of the worst, 202 people, including 88 Australians, were killed in a bombing in Bali in 2002 by an Al Qaeda-linked group.
Australian prime minister Malcolm Turnbull told parliament yesterday he phoned Mr Jokowi to offer condolences.
Australia and Indonesia plan to jointly host an Asia-Pacific summit in August aimed at coordinating against the security threat posed by home-grown extremist militants returning from battlefields in Syria and Iraq.
President Joko Widodo called for people to stay calm and remain united