Indonesia Hunts Terror Suspects After Deadly Raids

MEDAN, KOMPAS.com - Indonesia police said Tuesday they were hunting terrorists who escaped a series of raids during the weekend targeting a group blamed for a spate of holdups carried out to fund future attacks. The country's U.S.-backed anti-terror police shot dead three suspects and arrested 15 others in operations Sunday on Sumatra island as part of ongoing investigations into bank robberies and terror-related activity.

Police said agents opened fire and killed two militants when they tried to use women and children as human shields after security forces surrounded a house in Tanjung Balai, North Sumatra province.  A third terrorist was killed in a separate raid, police said.

The operations also netted three kilograms of TNT explosives and weapons including an assault rifle. Members of the elite Detachment 88 counterterrorism squad would remain in and around the North Sumatra capital, Medan, where 15 militants who escaped the raids were believed to be at large.

“We believe that they are still in North Sumatra province,“ Police Chief Bambang Hendarso Danuri told reporters in Medan.

The Islamic militants are linked to regional extremist network Jemaah Islamiyah and unidentified foreign groups that are plotting attacks in the mainly Muslim archipelago, police said. The group was also connected to militants who were discovered training in Aceh province, northern Sumatra, in February, leading to the killing and arrest of scores of suspects.

Police said they were behind crimes including a bank robbery in Medan on Aug. 18 in which heavily armed gunmen escaped with about $40,000.

“They committed the robbery to collect funds to buy firearms, grenades and other weapons to commit terror acts in Indonesia, especially North Sumatra,“ Danuri said late Monday.

“We'll continue to investigate but we suspect they're supported by overseas networks,“ he said, when asked if there was a link to al Qaeda.

Wearing motorcycle helmets and using hand signals to coordinate their movements, 16 gunmen killed a police officer and wounded two guards during the Medan heist, the most spectacular of a series of recent armed robberies. Police said the thieves showed a level of training, discipline and ruthlessness that raised suspicions about links to terrorist groups.