Noordin MD Top Believed To Be In Shoot- Out With Police

JAKARTA: Police from Indonesia’s anti-terrorism unit exchanged gunfire on Friday with suspected militants in Central Java after a raid in a house where Malaysian-born militant Noordin Mohammad Top, was believed to be holed up.

Noordin is believed to be one of the perpetrators behind deadly bomb attacks on two luxury hotels here last month.

“Hopefully it’s Noordin’s group because they are our main target,” national police spokesman Nanan Soekarna said.

A source at Indonesia’s anti-terrorism unit Detachment 88 told Reuters the raid on the remote house in rice fields had started at 5pm local time (6pm Malaysian time) and was still going on, with sporadic exchanges of automatic weapons.

The online news site detik.com quoted an intelligence source as saying Noordin was shot dead but that needed to be confirmed through a DNA sample.

The report could not be independently confirmed.

The July 17 attacks on the JW Marriott and Ritz-Carlton killed nine and wounded 53, including Indonesians and foreigners.

The Detachment 88 source said police did not know how many suspects were in the house in Kedu village near Temanggung, Central Java, and were not entering because of concerns it was booby-trapped with explosives.

“Yes, it’s possible it’s him and his men,” the source said when asked whether it was likely that Noordin was in the house.

TV footage showed the house lit up by bright search lamps and Metro TV said police had sealed off an area of about one square kilometre around the house.

Metro said two men had been arrested in a workshop before police raided the house belonging to a teacher in a Muslim school.

Soekarna said he could not immediately confirm any arrests.

Police have been focusing much of their search on Central Java, where Noordin is believed to have a network of sympathisers to help shelter him.

Noordin is believed to have planned previous bomb attacks on the JW Marriott in Jakarta in 2003, on the Australian embassy in Jakarta in 2004, and in Bali in 2005 - attacks designed to scare off foreign tourists and businesses so that JI could create a caliphate across Southeast Asia.

Noordin, a key recruiter, strategist and financier for JI, has been on the run for years, eluding capture on several occasions.

He was a close ally of Azahari Husin, a Malaysian bomb-maker, who was killed during a police raid in 2005 in East Java.

He is thought to have escaped a raid in Central Java in 2006 when two other alleged militants were killed. - Reuters