Securing the area
Suspected IS-linked attacker shot dead by cops during heated firefight
A police officer pointing his weapon near a local government office following an explosion in Bandung, West Java. A man linked to the Islamic State group was shot during the firefight.
Bandung: Indonesian police shot dead a man linked to the Islamic State group during a firefight at a government office after a small bomb was set off nearby.
No one apart from the attacker was hurt in the incident yesterday in the city of Bandung on Java island, which started with a pressure cooker bomb exploding in a park before the gun battle erupted in the office opposite.
Police said the attacker was a former terror convict from an IS- supporting network called Jamaah Ansharut Daulah, which has been blamed for a series of recent attacks in the Muslimmajority country including an assault in Jakarta last year.
After the blast, the attacker fled into a building belonging to local authorities opposite the park and set it ablaze.
Police exchanged fire during an hour-long standoff with the man. He was shot in the stomach and died later in hospital.
Everyone was evacuated from the building unhurt. Police seized guns and two backpacks carried by the attacker but did not say what they contained.
Authorities were also searching for a second person involved in the assault after witnesses said they spotted the attacker on a motorbike with someone else before the initial bomb blast.
National police chief Tito Karnavian said the attacker belonged to Jamaah Ansharut Daulah (JAD) and had demanded that authorities release his associates from prison.
“He belongs to the group JAD – it is a main supporter of ISIS,” Karnavian told reporters, using a different name for IS. He asked for his friends to be released from prison.”
He said the attacker, whom he did not name, had been jailed over his involvement with militant train- ing in Jantho in Aceh province.
Jantho was the location of a notorious Islamic extremist training camp, which was closed down by authorities in 2010.
Last month the United States designated JAD a terrorist organisation, saying the network was an umbrella group for about two dozen Indonesian extremist outfits.
Last year’s gun and suicide attack in the capital left four attackers and four civilians dead, and was the first assault claimed by IS in SouthEast Asia.
Many recent IS-linked plots in Indonesia have been botched or foiled. Analysts say that many of the country’s militants lack the capacity to launch serious attacks.