On Thursday, the five men – one of them reported to be carrying a black Daesh flag – attacked a Starbucks cafe and police traffic booth with hand-made bombs, guns and suicide vests, killing two people – an Indonesian and a Canadian national.
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In a statement posted online, it said: “A group of soldiers of the caliphate in Indonesia targeted a gathering from the crusader alliance that fights the Islamic State in Jakarta through planting several explosive devices that went off as four of the soldiers attacked with light weapons and explosive belts”.
Depok area police chief Col. Dwiyono told MetroTV that the three men were arrested at dawn on the outskirts of Jakarta.
It was not immediately clear whether they had direct links with the attacks.
Authorities have named Bahrum Naim, an Indonesian believed to be fighting with IS in Syria, as the suspected co-ordinator.
People, including unarmed police officers, flee from the scene after a gun battle broke out following an explosion in Jakarta, Indonesia Thursday, Jan. 14, 2016.
Foreign Ministry spokesman Arrmanatha Nasir thanked countries including Australia for their support, but said the situation was under control.
The tragic event has been claimed by Islamic State group and five of those killed were attackers.
The area near a Starbucks coffee shop where the attack by suicide bombers and gunmen began remained cordoned off with a highly visible police presence Friday. Bahrun Naim is a leader of Katibah Nusantara, a Southeast Asian military unit under Islamic State, Karnavian said. Mr Bashir’s group was behind the 2002 Bali bombings, which killed more than 200 people, and has carried out sporadic attacks in South-East Asia.
Police spokesman Anton, citing Indonesia’s Information Ministry, said more than 200 IS-linked militants have returned to the country.
“The network of the perpetrator is the group related to the IS”, the police chief told a press conference.
In Pakistan, where terrorism is a major factor of daily life, Father Khalid Yousaf, acting executive secretary of the bishops’ commission for social communications, condemned the terrorist attacks in Indonesia and expressed sympathy for the victims.
All five gunmen were killed and twenty people were wounded in the attacks, police said.
The message said attackers carried out the Jakarta assault and had planted several bombs with timers.
Indonesian police have explicitly likened the attack to the far bloodier violence in November in Paris that left 130 people dead and offered sobering proof to a horrified world of the reach and fanatical determination of IS jihadists.
As many as 800 Indonesians have joined the IS group in Syria and Iraq, according to Said Agil Siraj, chairman of Indonesia’s biggest Muslim organization of Nahdlatul Ulema.
Indonesia has the world’s largest Muslim population, the vast majority of whom practice a moderate form of Islam.
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Harits Abu Ulya, an expert on militancy who knows Bahrun Naim, said he expected more attacks. Metro TV said there was no indication that the men – which it described as a bomb-maker, a firearms expert and a preacher – were linked to Thursday’s attack.
