National Police chief warns of fresh terror attacks

National Police chief warns of fresh terror attacks

The Jakarta Post, Jakarta

Police have warned that terrorist groups within the country might
be planning another attack as there has been an increase in
communications between them.

National Police chief Gen. Da'i Bachtiar said on Thursday, as
quoted by AFP, that police detected the communications increase
due to the hard work of intelligence agencies who were monitoring
the militants' activities.

Although the intelligence could not pin-point the militants
exact whereabouts due to Indonesia's vast area, he believed that
the militants were in Indonesia and that they were in contact
with others overseas.

Due to the warning, Da'i said that embassies and other
potential targets such as shopping malls and international
schools would have to maintain heightened security until the
threat subsided.

The United States and Australian governments issued warnings
last week that bomb attacks were planned against hotels
frequented by foreigners.

Although Da'i did not reveal the identities of the terrorist
groups making contact between each other, he said that they were
responsible for a series of deadly attacks in the country
including the Bali bombings in 2002.

Da'i also admitted that it was difficult to find and arrest
the terrorists, including two top Malaysian fugitives Noordin
Mohd. Top and Azahari Husin, since the country was so large and
the fact that certain people had been helping the fugitives to
hide.

Separately, Southeast Asia project director of the
International Crisis Group Sidney Jones, in an article published
in The Asian Wall Street Journal on Wednesday, said that there
might be a complex web of personal alliances among Indonesian
militants since they were born out of communal conflicts and
strengthened by military training at home and abroad.

Five police officers guarding a post on the border between
Muslim and Christian areas on Seram island, another area with a
similar history to Poso, were shot in the head in close range.

The people behind these attacks might be related to each other
as she said that one of the men arrested for the Seram attack
revealed that he had undertaken military training in the
Philippines and that he had lived in Poso for quite some time.

After the attack in Maluku, it is possible that the militants
might turn their attention to Western targets.