| ||
| ||
| ||
 |
|
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Police hunt for 'walking bombs'
JAKARTA, Indonesia -- Indonesian police are searching for two of Southeast Asia's most dangerous terrorists, who have strapped themselves with explosives to become "walking bombs" in the West Java city of Bandung. Malaysian bomb-making expert Azahari bin Husin and Noordin Mohammed Top narrowly escaped capture Wednesday when police raided a house the men were renting in Bandung, west of Jakarta. Police said they allowed the men to make a run for it because they were wearing explosives and feared they would detonate them in the residential neighborhood. "These two suspects are very dangerous because they always carry explosives," National Police spokesman Col. Zainuri Lubis told The Associated Press. On Friday police combed the West Java capital, stopping cars and closing off roads. Police also said they were monitoring communications and searching houses in the area. Police suspect the men are planning a new series of attacks on Western targets. Both men are wanted in connection with the Marriott Hotel bombing in Jakarta in August. Azahari is reportedly number two in the al Qaeda-linked Jemaah Islamiyah (JI) network, a group trying to set up a pan-Islamic state in Southeast Asia. He has also been linked to the October 12, 2002 Bali bombings that killed more than 200 people. Raid on safehousePolice got a break early Wednesday when they arrested two other terror suspects identified as Ismail and Tohir in the West Java town of Cirebon, near Bandung. The two had attached bombs to their bodies in a bid to avoid capture, but did not have time to trigger the switch, Erwin Mappaseng, head of the national police criminal investigation department, told reporters at the time. Officers were close to arresting the other two men near the safehouse when they fled the scene. Police said they did not shoot at Azahari because he had a bomb strapped around him and ran into a crowd of people. Ismail confessed to police they were all JI members and that Azahari and Noordin had as much as 5 kilograms (11 pounds) of explosives with them, according to AP reports. Ismail also told police that the group had been preparing an attack on the Citibank branch in Bandung as well as Western hotels and residential neighborhoods in Jakarta. Indonesian authorities have convicted 29 people in connection to the Bali blasts, handing out sentences ranging from three years to death. Along with Azahari and Noordin, authorities are still looking for six other Bali bombing suspects. Wednesday's arrests brings to 14 those detained in the Marriott bombing. No one has yet been charged. -- CNN Correspondent Atika Shubert contributed to this report
|
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
|
