Indonesia stops JI plot against president

Published: 9/08/2009 at 03:31 AM

Jakarta - A house belonging to Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono was the intended target of two would-be suicide bombers who were killed Saturday outside Jakarta, the police chief said.

National police chief Bambang Hendarso Danuri said an accomplice of the men had told police they were planning to detonate a small truck packed with explosives at the house later this month.

The men were shot dead by police as they tried to throw pipe-bombs to avoid arrest at their rented house in Bekasi, outside Jakarta, where the truck was found rigged with explosives along with other bomb-making material.

One of Yudhoyono's houses was about a 12-minute drive away, Danuri said. 'Our president was a target,' he told reporters.

Earlier on Saturday, officers raided a second house close to the capital Jakarta where they shot and killed two suspected militants and seized bombs and a car rigged to carry them, said Danuri.

He said one of those arrested had reserved a room in one of the hotels that was used by the terrorists before they attacked.

The house was about 5 km from the residence of President Yudhoyono. Officers circled the house in central Java province late on Friday afternoon after making arrests in a nearby town. At one point, they sent remote-controlled robots into the isolated building to search for bombs.

Not long before they stormed the red-tiled building, officers dressed in black behind a shield fired into the house from close range, while others fired repeated volleys from a hill behind it.

Indonesian police met with booby traps and suicide bombers in at least one other raid on a terrorist hide-out and approached the house with extreme caution.

The two would-be suicide bombers were shot dead after Southeast Asia's most wanted terror suspect was reportedly killed during a 16-hour siege on a suspected militant hide-out that ended on Saturday when police stormed the house.

Local TV stations reported militant chief Noordin Mohammad Top, who is blamed for last month's attacks on two American hotels in the capital, Jakarta, was killed in the bathroom of the house in a rice-growing village in central Java province following a lengthy bomb and gun battle. - Compiled from news agency reports

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