By Agustinus Beo Da Costa and Gayatri Suroyo
A militant killed by police in Indonesia after detonating a small bomb in the city of Bandung on Monday was “possibly” part of a radical network sympathetic to Islamic State, police said.
The blast in the courtyard of a government office in the capital of West Java province did not cause any casualties and the bomber was shot by police after running into the building.
The militant had arrived at the office on a motorbike and placed his home-made bomb, assembled using a pressure cooker, in the corner of the courtyard.
The attacker had demanded that Indonesia’s anti-terror police unit, Densus 88, release all its detainees, according to provincial police chief Anton Charliyan.
The police chief speculated that he may have been linked to Jemaah Ansharut Daulah (JAD), a group on a U.S. State Department “terrorist” list.
“There’s a possibility of JAD,” Charliyan said, when asked which group the militant belonged to.
JAD is an umbrella organization that is estimated by Indonesian authorities to include hundreds of Islamic State sympathizers in the Southeast Asian country.
Indonesia, a secular state with the world’s largest Muslim population, has recently come under attack from radical Islamist groups.
An assault by suicide bombers and gunmen on the capital Jakarta in January 2016 was claimed by Islamic State. It was the first time that Islamic State had claimed responsibility for an attack in Indonesia.
Islamist militant attacks had been relatively rare in Bandung, about three hours away from Jakarta. Provincial police spokesman Yusri Yunus said the situation was “under control” in Bandung after the bomber was killed.
(Reporting by Agustinus Beo Da Costa and Gayatri Suroyo; Additional reporting by Kanupriya Kapoor; Writing by Ed Davies and Eveline Danubrata; Editing by Michael Perry & Simon Cameron-Moore)
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