A police raid on the outskirts of Jakarta Tuesday may have killed one of Indonesia's most-wanted terrorists, though officials said they would await tests to verify the man's identity.
Local media cited counterterrorism squad members saying that a shootout in Pamulang, Banten province, killed Dulmatin, a senior member of the al Qaeda-linked terror network Jemaah Islamiyah.
But Indonesia's national police spokesman, Edward Aritonang, said he could not immediately confirm whether Dulmatin was dead until further testing. DNA test results were not expected soon.
Dulmatin, who has several aliases, including Joko Pitoyo, is the suspected mastermind behind the Bali bombings in 2002, which killed 202 people. He is an electronics specialist who has trained in al Qaeda camps in Afghanistan and has a $10 million bounty on his head, according to the U.S. State Department.
The raid Tuesday was linked to ongoing security sweeps in Aceh province in northern Sumatra. Police have arrested 15 suspected militants and one has been killed. Three police officers have died in the raids.
Aceh Governor Irwandi Jusuf said that, for a year now, he has known about a militant training camp in the province. He said militants were seeking to establish camps similar to those run by Jemaah Islamiyah in the the southern Philippines.
The group has a stated goal of creating an idealized Islamic state comprising Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore, the southern Philippines and southern Thailand, according to GlobalSecurity.org, a public policy Web site that provides background on defense issues.
