• 01:20
  • Thursday ,11 March 2010
العربية

'Bali bomber' killed in Indonesia

By-BBC

International News

00:03

Thursday ,11 March 2010

'Bali bomber' killed in Indonesia

 Indonesia has confirmed that police have killed Dulmatin, the last main suspect of the 2002 Bali bombings.

President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono's announcement came a day after police said they had killed three suspected militants in two raids in Jakarta.
 
Officials had not immediately been able to confirm that Dulmatin, a suspected planner of the attacks which killed 202 people, was among those killed.
 
Mr Yudhoyono is on a three-day trip to neighbouring Australia.
 
The raids on Tuesday were said to be linked to an ongoing operation against militants in Aceh province that has brought a number of arrests.
 
Dulmatin was alleged to be a leading member of Jemaah Islamiah (JI) - a militant group with links to al-Qaeda - which has a long history of launching attacks in Indonesia and is blamed for the Bali attack.
 
Most wanted
 
"We can confirm that one of those that were killed was Mr Dulmatin, one of the top south-east Asian terrorists that we have been looking for," Mr Yudhoyono said through an interpreter in a luncheon speech at Australia's parliament.
 
The killing of Dulmatin will be greeted with particular enthusiasm in Australia - about half of the 202 casualties in the Bali bombings were Australian.
 
The Australian Prime Minister, Kevin Rudd, had earlier praised Indonesia's efforts to dismantle terrorist networks.
 
He was speaking in Canberra at a joint news conference with Mr Yudhoyono.
 
Mr Rudd described the Indonesian operation as very professional and significant.
 
Indonesia's anti-terrorist forces have launched a series of raids nationwide after the discovery of an alleged Islamist militant training camp in the province of Aceh last month.
 
The BBC's Indonesia correspondent Karishma Vaswani says Dulmatin has been an elusive target. A few years ago, the Philippines army said he had been injured during a gun battle, but no-one could say for sure that he had been seriously hurt.
 
DNA tests were carried out on a body found in the southern Philippines in 2008, but it was confirmed not to be his.
 
DNA tests had also been necessary to prove beyond doubt that Noordin Mohamed Top, at the time Indonesia's most-wanted Islamist militant, had been killed in September 2009.
 
Dismantling
 
Our correspondent says the death of Dulmatin could be a sign that Indonesian terror networks are regrouping, despite officials' hopes that they had been successfully weakened.
 
The latest raids come less than two weeks before the visit to Indonesia of US President Barack Obama.
 
Indonesia has made significant inroads in recent years into dismantling the leadership of JI.
 
The police have also been recently engaged in an operation targeting Aceh militants.
 
A total of 14 people have been charged with plotting to launch terrorist attacks.
 
Those charged are believed by officials to be members of a previously unknown terror group.
 
Seizures in raids included DVDs on the Bali bombings.
 
Police have been investigating possible links between the militants and JI.