Indonesia is hunting for terror cells believed to be behind Thursday’s attack that killed seven people, including two civilians, here, Jakarta’s chief of police said.
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ISIS said, while claiming responsibility for the attacks, that “a group of soldiers of the caliphate in Indonesia targeted a gathering from the crusader alliance that fights the Islamic State in Jakarta”.
Police said earlier on Friday that they had identified four of the five dead attackers, and launched raids by heavily armed police in Jakarta and other locations across the far-flung archipelago that resulted in the seizure of a Daesh flag and other unspecified “books and posters”.
Last month, anti-terror police arrested nine suspected militants and said they had planned attacks “to attract worldwide news coverage of their existence here”.
Police confirmed that Islamic State was responsible and named an Indonesian militant, Bahrun Naim, as the mastermind.
Attackers set off explosions at a Starbucks cafe in a bustling shopping area of downtown Jakarta and waged gun-battles with police yesterday, leaving bodies in the streets as office workers watched in terror from high-rise windows.
Islamic State (IS) has taken responsibility for the assault that claimed the lives of two innocent people and five attackers at a busy intersection in the capital on Thursday.
It was the first major attack in Indonesia’s capital since the 2009 bombings of two hotels that killed seven people and injured more than 50.
Charliyan said it’s believed the attackers were affiliated with ISIS and were targeting police and foreigners – the latter also being a presumed motive in the Istanbul attack and the 2009 Jakarta blast.
“Australians’ thoughts, prayers and resolute solidarity are with the people of Indonesia as they respond to the terrorist attacks”, he wrote.
He said the majority of Indonesia’s population was Muslim and said the Jakarta attacks should remind people that terrorism was not just against one religion. The attackers also were killed, either by their suicide vests or by police. Bahrun Naim is a leader of Katibah Nusantara, a Southeast Asian military unit under Islamic State, Karnavian said. But the casualties were relatively few compared with the mayhem and carnage caused by the Paris attacks.
In November 2010, Naim was sentenced him to 2-1/2 years prison in Indonesia on charges of storing illegal weapons and explosives, but on release he is reported to have travelled to Syria to join Daesh.
“Thankfully, because otherwise if they had been efficient terrorists they could have killed a large number of people in that place”.
“He was originally from Karawang, West Java”, said Solahudin, author of the book The Roots of Terrorism in Indonesia.
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Employees survey the damage at the Starbucks cafe where an attack occurred on Thursday, in Jakarta, Indonesia, Friday, Jan. 15, 2016.
