Saturday, Nov 03, 2012
POSO, Indonesia - Indonesian police Saturday shot dead a suspected militant and seized bombs during a raid in a district that has been at the centre of an anti-terror crackdown in the past week, a spokesman said.
The raid on a house was conducted by local police and the anti-terror unit at sunrise in Kayamaya village in Sulawesi island's central district of Poso.
"One suspect was killed in the raid and another has been arrested and taken to police headquarters in the city of Palu," national police spokesman Boy Rafli Amar told reporters.
"The suspects resisted arrest and began throwing explosives toward the police, who opened fire in response."
Amar said police had seized several assembled bombs and other materials from the home.
Witnesses, who declined to be named, said the men had attended morning prayers at the neighbourhood mosque and were shot outside a school as they tried to run from the house.
An AFP photographer saw a pool of blood in the school courtyard after the shooting.
The raid came after an alleged militant was killed, two others arrested and explosives seized in a raid in Poso on Wednesday. There have been three failed bomb attacks in the district in the past week.
Two policemen were found dead in Poso last month, with their throats slit, after disappearing while investigating an alleged terror camp linked to extremist Islamist group Jemaah Ansharut Tauhid (JAT).
Poso was the site of sectarian violence between Muslims and Christians between the late 1990s and mid-2000s that left thousands dead. It has since been described by police as a hotbed of terrorism
