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(BBC News) – Indonesian police have stormed a house in central Java believed to contain one of South-East Asia’s most wanted men. The move came after a stand-off lasting 17 hours which included exchanges of gunfire and several explosions.
Almost a day after surrounding it, members of Indonesia’s elite anti-terrorism unit entered the remote house in a rice paddy field outside Temanggung at 0945 (0245 GMT) by blowing in one of the doors.
Several minutes later, after further explosions and exchanges of gunfire, officers were seen leaving with their helmets off and shaking hands with each other.
Local media have reported that the man, Noordin Mohamed Top, was killed, however there has been no confirmation from the police. Noordin, a Malaysian citizen, is suspected of involvement in last month’s bombings of two Jakarta hotels.
Police said the anti-terror operation in the Temanggung district followed the arrest on Friday of several suspected militants loyal to Noordin.
In a separate incident, police said they had killed two suspected militants in a raid on a house in the Bekasi area, near the capital. Five others were arrested and up to 500kg of explosives were seized.
(SkyNews) – Noordin Mohammed Top is a violent jihadist, a master bomb-maker, and the leader of the most extreme splinter group of the Jemaah Islamiyah terror network.
Police have been studying an unexploded device and bomb-making materials found in the suspects’ “control centre” in room 1808 of the JW Marriott hotel in the capital Jakarta.
(The Guardian) – He probably didn’t see it coming. Baitullah Mehsud was hooked up to a drip in a remote farmhouse in Pakistan’s tribal badlands, his second wife by his side, being treated by a trusted doctor for a long-standing kidney ailment.
Then a pair of Hellfire missiles slammed through the roof, fired from a CIA-operated drone hovering in the inky sky. The Taliban commander, his wife, brother and several bodyguards perished, Rehman Malik, Pakistan’s interior minister, said today.
Death by drone may be silent, but news of Mehsud’s demise was loudly hailed as a signal victory for Pakistan in its rocky struggle against violent extremism.
"But I will not let myself be reduced to silence."
