Indonesian police said they have arrested 12 people suspected of links to the Jakarta bombings, as the death toll in the brazen attacks by Muslim militants rose to eight after a third civilian succumbed to wounds. Naim, who left Indonesia for Syria to join ISIS in 2014 after being jailed, is believed to be based in the ISIS stronghold of Raqqa, Syria, where he had been calling for attacks back in his home country.
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Indonesia’s national police chief Badrodin Haiti speaks about operations following this week’s militant attack in the capital during a media briefing at police headquarters in Jakarta, Indonesia January 16, 2016. The Indonesian police and intelligence community were aware of Naim’s actions in Syria and were tracking his attempts to work with local terrorist organizations some time before yesterday’s attack, according to Adityo.
All five attackers armed with handmade bombs, guns and suicide vests died in Thursday’s attack.
As many as 24 people were injured and seven died in the attack. It was responsible for several attacks in Indonesia, including the 2002 bombings of bars in Bali, which left 202 people dead, as well as two hotel bombings in Jakarta in 2009 that killed seven people.
Khalid said three other people suspected of being supporters of Islamic State were arrested this week at Kuala Lumpur airport after they returned from Turkey.
The attack has been claimed by Isis, which has ruthlessly carved out a self-proclaimed caliphate in Syria and Iraq, and Indonesian police have more specifically blamed a Southeast Asian affiliate of the group known as Katibah Nusantara.
While Indonesia recovers, officials told VOA news, between 200 and 300 IS sympathizers are in the country.
The world’s most populous Muslim nation is no stranger to terrorist related violence.
Police officers question Siti Maesaroh, the wife of Muhammad Ali who is identified by the police as one of the militants killed in Thursday’s attack.
A bomb explosion is seen outside a Starbucks shop in Jakarta, Indonesia, in this still image taken from an amateur video shot last Thursday. “There has been a lull in the shooting but someone is on the roof of the building and police are aiming their guns at him”, Reuters photographer Darren Whiteside said as the attack unfolded.
However, authorities found themselves unable to determine whether the latest acts of terror was a “test attack” before a bigger one.
Dozens of Indonesians rallied Friday at the scene of the blasts outside a shopping mall, carrying flowers and shouting, “We are not afraid!”.
That Malaysian police had on Friday arrested a suspected militant at a train station in the capital Kuala Lumpur, with weapons and documents linked to ISIS, is yet another sign of the long tentacles of the extremist group over South-east Asia.
He said Indonesia will continue to see a persistent and low-level threat of attacks, a situation not different from the past six years, when there were no major attacks but several thwarted plots.
In its statement, the council condemned in the strongest possible terms the attack and expressed deep sympathy with and condolences to the families of the victims and to the people and government of Indonesia.
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“Whatever they did, they have killed life”, said Muji Sutrisno, a noted Indonesian intellectual. The instructions signaled a shift in the tactics of Indonesia’s homegrown terrorist organizations, which have concentrated their efforts on attacks that target police institutions in recent years.
