The alleged planner of the brazen attack in Jakarta on Thursday (Jan 14) is believed to be Indonesian militant Muhammad Bahrun Naim, a leader of militant group Katibah Nusantara.
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The country had been on edge for weeks over the threat posed by Islamist militants, and counter-terrorism police had rounded up about 20 people with suspected links to Islamic State.
Top: Police officers respond to one of the attacks in the centre of the Indonesian capital on Thursday; above: GUNMAN CAPTURED ON CAMERA?
Jakarta police chief Maj.
Men armed with pistols then took two foreigners hostage – an Algerian and a man that Indonesian authorities said was from Canada.
Indonesian police say the assailants probably wanted to copy the November Paris attacks by striking several locations at the same time. Their identification with the Islamic State group in distant Syria is an attempt to change those perceptions by linking to a network known for brutal, headline-grabbing attacks.
A Dutch Foreign Ministry spokeswoman in the Netherlands said a Dutch man was seriously injured and was undergoing surgery.
The code name “concert” was used in the terrorist attack in central Jakarta that killed seven people on Thursday when multiple explosions rocked the city’s central business district.
“The state, the nation and the people should not be afraid of, and be defeated by, such terror acts”, he said.
Karnavian also said the attackers had links with IS and were part of a group led by Bahrum Naim, an Indonesian militant who is now in Syria. Those attacks in November killed 130 people. It was the first major attack in Jakarta since the 2009 simultaneous attacks on the J.W. Marriott and Ritz Carlton hotels, which left seven people dead.
Clarke Jones, a counterterrorism expert at Australian National University, said Thursday’s Jakarta attack was of a “fairly amateurish type, with hand grenades and firearms”. “We are not afraid”.
US Secretary of State John Kerry also condemned the attacks, saying that these acts of terror are not going to intimidate nation-states from protecting their citizens and continuing to provide real opportunity, education, jobs, possibilities of a future.
Five attackers and two other people were killed in explosions and gunfire Thursday in downtown Jakarta.
UNEP chief Achim Steiner said the organization “condemns in the strongest possible terms these senseless acts of terror”.
Addressing Muslims in Indonesia, the Philippines, Malaysia and neighbouring countries, Zawahiri said the region’s Muslims were “leading an ideological and political battle against the seculars and the enemies of the religion”.
Reuters news agency contacted him on Nov 24 on social messaging app Telegram, using details provided by one of his acquaintances. But so far, ISIS had not issued any official confirmation on its claim of responsibility.
The Soufan Group, a New York-based security consultancy, says that of the 500-700 Indonesians who travelled overseas to join IS’s self-proclaimed caliphate across swathes of Syria and Iraq, scores have since returned.
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The head of Indonesia’s second-largest Muslim organisation, Din Syamsuddin, warned on Friday against “Islamophobia” following the Jakarta attack but also urged Muslims not to be influenced by “radical teachings”.
