Antiterrorism police stormed an isolated Indonesian farmhouse in central Java early Saturday, killing one of Southeast Asia's most-wanted terrorists, Noordin Mohamed Top, who is wanted for allegedly masterminding deadly attacks on two hotels in Jakarta last month, a senior antiterrorism official said.
In a separate raid overnight near Jakarta, the capital, police shot dead two alleged terrorists and arrested three others. They uncovered 1,000 pounds of bombs in a house and a car specially modified to carry them, suggesting the attacks on the JW Marriott and Ritz-Carlton, which killed nine people including the suicide bombers, possibly were intended as the start of a new wave of bombings in Indonesia.
The twin raids represented a potentially major blow to the already-embattled network of terrorists in Indonesia, though analysts cautioned against drawing too many conclusions until the names of all the suspects are known and their identities are proven. Although police were still trying to identify some of the individuals they killed or apprehended, they believe the list includes a number of high-level targets in addition to Mr. Noordin. If so, the raids could go a long way towards restoring confidence in Indonesia's ability to maintain law and order despite recent concerns that authorities were growing lax in their fight against extremism.
The arrests could also help boost the image of President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, who won reelection in July partly because of his successes in reining in terrorism since coming to power in 2004. For Mr. Yudhoyono, a former army general, the hotel attacks were an embarrassment coming so soon after the presidential elections and at a time when Indonesia's international image has been improving. "I extend my highest gratitude and respect to the people for their brilliant achievement in this operation," Mr. Yudhoyono said on Saturday, the Associated Press reported.
The live television coverage of the police offensive captivated Indonesian audiences. Local news channel tvOne showed live pictures of black-clad antiterrorism police carefully entering the farmhouse near Temanggung, a town in central Java, a province on Indonesia's main island, after they had riddled the dwelling with a volley of shots and sent in robots to sweep for bombs.
Earlier, police had set off controlled explosions in the house, shaking the building and sending plumes of smoke into the sky. After the building was secured, television showed police shaking hands and congratulating one another. Police initially said four terrorists were in the house, but Police Chief Bambang Hendarso Danuri later said a man, who he declined to identify, had faced down police alone during the 16-hour siege.
A senior antiterrorism official said a man believed to be Mr. Noordin, a 40-year-old former accountant, was shot while hiding in the bathroom at the back of the house. Police will only announce the death once the body has been flown back to Jakarta and undergone an official autopsy, the person said.
Earlier on Saturday, a national police spokesman, Nanan Sukarna, said police believed Mr. Noordin was in the house. Mr. Noordin has evaded capture numerous times in the past, including two incidents in which police thought they were closing in on their target before he disappeared.
Mr. Noordin, a Malaysian citizen, is wanted for orchestrating a number of attacks on Western targets in Indonesia, including an earlier attack in 2003 on the JW Marriott, a 2004 attack on the Australian embassy in Jakarta and another bombing of Bali beachfront restaurants in 2005.
Since then, Indonesia, a secular Muslim country of 240 million people, has made great strides in combating terrorism, arresting hundreds of alleged militants. But the latest blasts raised fears about Mr. Noordin's continued ability to mount attacks and evade capture by relying on a small but tightly-knit network of Islamic groups and schools in central Java, the heartland of hard-line Islam in Indonesia.
If indeed Mr. Noordin has been killed, it would mark a major success for Indonesia's U.S.-trained antiterrorism police unit called Detachment 88. Last year, the police broke up a terrorist cell linked to Mr. Noordin in the city of Palembang on Sumatra island, but made few new arrests over the following year despite a number of leads thrown up by those detentions. Then, in June, they arrested a man in Cilacap, central Java, called Syaefuddin Zuhri, alias Sabit, who had helped the Palembang group acquire arms and bombs and was believed to be a close associate of Mr. Noordin.
That arrest came too late to stop the Jakarta hotel bombings the following month, which police believe were organized from Cilacap. But the detention gave police information they were able to use to further their subsequent investigations. Soon after the attacks, they raided an Islamic boarding school in the town run by Mr. Noordin's father-in-law and found explosives similar to an undetonated bomb in Room 1808 of the JW Marriott, which the bombers had used as a command center a few days before the blasts. Police also arrested Mr. Noordin's wife in Cilacap.
Authorities then put a $100,000 bounty on Mr. Noordin's head. Earlier on Friday, their search led them to arrest two people in a market in Temanggung in connection with the hotel attacks. It was unclear what evidence drew the police to Temanggung, but questioning of the two arrested men led them to the farmhouse, which is owned by their uncle, an elderly Islamic school teacher. Local media said the younger men were Mr. Noordin's body guards. Other reports said the teacher's son had been arrested in 2003 in connection with the earlier attack on the JW Marriott.
Hundreds of Detachment 88 police arrived at the farmhouse on Friday and began shooting at what they believed to be four terrorists holed up inside at around 5 p.m. local time. The standoff lasted through the night with sporadic automatic gunfire and bomb explosions.
Around dawn on Saturday, a major explosion was heard in the house and later police snipers on a nearby wooded hill intensified their attack on the property, which is surrounded by rice paddies. The tvOne news channel reported that a man inside the building at one point called out "I am Noordin M. Top." After the siege ended, ambulances arrived and men carried coffins in to the ruined house, television pictures showed. It appeared that no police officers had been killed in the incident.
Information from the earlier arrests in Temanggung led police not only to the farmhouse but also overnight to raid the house near Jakarta, in the satellite town of Bekasi. Police opened fire on a car that returned to the house before dawn, killing two people and leading to the arrest of three others. Local media reported that the men tried to hold out, throwing pipe bombs at the police. The car, which had fake plates, had been driven from central Java, police said.
Police confirmed the target of the bomb was Mr. Yudhoyono's private residence, which is about three miles from the house. The terrorists planned to hit the residence two weeks from now, a police spokesman said. A spokesman for the president said he had only heard police reports that the bomb was meant for a "specific" target and couldn't comment further.
The dwelling near Jakarta was used as a safe-house by Mr. Noordin and his associates two days after the hotel bombings last month, police said. One of the men arrested at the house near Jakarta had reserved a room in the JW Marriott which the terrorists used as their command center.
One of the men killed in the raid near Jakarta was Aher Setyawan, a terrorist involved in a 2004 truck bomb attack on the Australian embassy in Jakarta, which killed nine people including the suicide bomber, police said. He was arrested in July 2004 before the embassy bombing but was released two months later, just after the attack, due to lack of evidence and didn't go to trial, according to Sidney Jones, an expert on Islamist groups in Indonesia with the International Crisis Group, a Brussels-based conflict-resolution body.
The question now - if Mr. Noordin is officially confirmed to have been killed – is whether the remnants of his network will be able to reassemble to carry out future attacks.
Mr. Noordin's network is believed to number only around 30 people, making the latest crackdown a devastating blow. But members of the network have been able to get shelter from a small but dedicated number of radicals who want Indonesia to implement Shariah Islamic law. Although those people don't necessarily support terrorism, they have been unwilling to turn Mr. Noordin in to police, experts say, and that kind of support could allow militants to regroup, even if they are weakened.
"Those individuals would never call up the police. There's a level of protection," said Noor Huda Ismail, executive director of the International Institute for Peacebuilding, a Jakarta-based non-governmental group that studies militant Islam.
A number of key Islamic terrorists remain at large including a man called Zulkarnaen, who is believed to be in Indonesia, the senior antiterrorism official said. Two other operatives known as Umar Patek and Dulmatin are suspected to be in the southern Philippines. They are believed to be hard-core militants with sophisticated bomb-making ability.
Ms. Jones of the International Crisis Group says police will need to remain vigilant. Only a small number of people are needed to mount a terrorist attack and Mr. Noordin's group has been able to effectively radicalize people to carry out acts of jihad despite intense police pressure, Ms. Jones says.
Mr. Noordin was able to carry out the latest attacks despite the killing in 2005 of a key member of his network, master bomb maker Azahari bin Husin, who was shot dead by police in a raid on a house similar to the one on Saturday. Mr. Noordin slipped away then, as he did the following year when another two militants were killed in a police raid on a house in Wonosobo, a central Java town not far from Temanggung.
Police should intensify their monitoring of about 50 militant Islamic schools that have given shelter to Mr. Noordin's group in the past and acted as meeting points for hard-line Islamic groups, Ms. Jones says.
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