Two terror suspects shot dead

JAKARTA: Indonesian militants supporting the Islamic State (IS) planned to attack a police post on New Year’s eve with machetes and knives, a police spokesman said yesterday.

The plot was broken up after police arrested two of the would-be attackers who led them to their hideout, where police shot dead their two co-conspirators on Sunday after police said they tried to attack officers with machetes.

“The four of them were planning to attack a police post in Purwakarta. They planned to attack on New Year’s Eve,” Rikwanto, a national police spokesman, told reporters, referring to a district about 100km east of the capital, Jakarta.

Sunday’s raid was the latest in a series over recent weeks that police say have disrupted attacks, raising concern that homegrown militants in the world’s largest Muslim-majority nation are getting bolder.

Police said last week that at least 14 people were being interrogated over suicide bomb plots targeting the presidential palace in Jakarta and an another undisclosed location.

Both involved female suicide bombers — a new tactic for Indonesian militants.

Police were still investigating whether the militants involved in the plot disrupted on Sunday had been trying to make bombs.

The suspects were members of Jamaah Ansharut Daulah, a pro-IS militant group, but it was not yet clear whether they been in direct communication with Bahrun Naim, an Indonesian militant who fled to Syria about two years ago, the spokesman said.

Police say many of the recent plots uncovered have been inspired, if not directed, by Mr Naim.

Police have arrested dozens of suspected militants in recent months, including a group on an island near Singapore who police say were planning to attack the citystate with a rocket.

Indonesia’s elite police unit, Special Detachment 88, has foiled at least 15 attacks this year and made more than 150 arrests.

A gun and bomb assault in the heart of Jakarta in January killed four people and was the first attack in Southeast Asia admitted by the IS.

“We ordered them to surrender and even fired warning shots, but they resisted and started to attack our officers with machetes, so we had to take them down,” national police spokesman Awi Setiyono said.

Police raided the house after arresting and interrogating two men on Sunday morning. The suspects attacked officers with knives but gave up after being shot and wounded, police said.

After being interrogated, they led police to a house at a separate location where two more members of the group were hiding.

Several sharp weapons were seized from the house but no explosives were found.

Police said the suspects and the dead men were members of the group responsible for a November attack on a church which killed a toddler on Borneo island.

“Their target is to attack police officers, in police posts or even at home.

They wanted to attack with sharp weapons such as knives and machetes,” Mr Setiyono said.

Less than a week before Christmas, Indonesian police thwarted a suicide-bomb plot planned for the holiday season and shot dead three militants in a raid at South Tangerang just outside Jakarta.

Indonesia suffered a string of deadly homegrown attacks during the 2000s, including the 2002 Bali bombings which killed more than 200 people.

A sustained crackdown has weakened many of the most dangerous extremist networks but there have been fears of a resurgence in militancy.