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PALU, Sept. 30 (AP) — Indonesia’s elite counterterrorism police have killed a militant believed to be responsible for the killing of Christian farmers in Sulawesi, police said Friday. The last member of an organization that pledged allegiance to the Islamic State.
Police said Al Ikhwarisman, also known as Jaid, was a key member of a network of jihadist groups in East Indonesia. Provincial police chief Rudy Soufahriadi said he was killed by Densus 88 anti-terrorist units late Thursday in a shootout in the mountain village of Kavind, Poso district, a hotbed of extremism in Central Sulawesi province .
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The East Indonesian Mujahideen (the Indonesian acronym MIT) has claimed responsibility for the killing of police officers and minority Christians, some of whom were beheaded. It has pledged allegiance to the Islamic State group. Sufahradi said Judd carried out at least 10 executions by the group, including the killing of four Christian farmers in May 2021.
Thursday’s shootout comes four months after security forces killed another remaining MIT member in a bushfire shootout, police said.
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“He was the last suspected member of the group,” Sufahradi said. “We have managed to eliminate a dangerous militant group that disturbed the peace in Poso.”
Security operations in Central Sulawesi were intensified last year to capture MIT members, in particular Ali Kalora, the group’s leader and Indonesia’s most-wanted militant. Kalora was killed in a shootout in July 2021, two months after the group killed four Christians, one of whom was beheaded, in the village of Calemago, Poso district.
Authorities said the attack was in retaliation for the March 2021 killing of two militants, including the son of the group’s former leader, Abu Varda Santoso.
Kalora’s predecessor, Santoso, was killed by security forces in July 2016. Dozens of other leaders and members of the group who fled to the remote mountainous jungles of Poso have since been killed or captured.
Indonesia, the world’s most populous Muslim-majority country, has been cracking down on militants since a 2002 bombing in the resort island of Bali killed 202 people, mostly Western and Asian tourists.
In recent years, in Indonesia, armed attacks against foreigners have largely been replaced by smaller, less deadly attacks against the government (mainly police and anti-terrorist forces) and what militants consider infidels. Inspired by the tactics of the Islamic State group abroad. (Associated Press)
(This is an unedited and auto-generated story from the Syndicated News feed, the body of the content may not have been modified or edited by LatestLY staff)
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