Militant in Jakarta attack dies from gun shot wounds

JAKARTA, Indonesia – A suspected militant who attacked police on the outskirts of the Indonesian capital Jakarta with a machete and pipe bombs has died from gunshot wounds, police said Thursday.

Jakarta police spokesman Awi Setiyono said three officers including a local police chief were injured and the attacker, who was shot several times, died on the way to hospital due to blood loss from wounds to his legs and stomach.

Footage broadcast on TVOne showed the man limping around a busy city road carrying weapons including what appeared to be a pipe bomb. At one point, the footage showed him running toward an officer. Police said the injured officers have stab wounds and have been hospitalized but the attacker also threw explosives.

Police were monitoring a protest when the attack occurred Thursday morning in the satellite city of Tangerang.

The attacker, Sultan Azianzah, 21, was unemployed and a member of Daulah Islam, a hardline group in Ciamis in West Java province, said Setiyono.

Radical Islamic groups in Indonesia, the world’s most populous Muslim nation, have been weakened by a sustained security crackdown since the 2002 bombings on the tourist island of Bali.

But IS’s high profile attacks in the Middle East and Europe and the group’s online propaganda have helped to recruit a tiny minority of Indonesians to their cause, mostly teenagers and young adults.

Experts say their capacity to mount successful attacks is still limited.

An attack in central Jakarta in January killed eight people including four attackers. Subsequent attacks have failed completely, including a would-be bombing of a church in Medan on Sumatra and an attack on a police complex in Solo on Java that killed only the suicide bomber.

Police seized sharp weapons, pipe bombs and an IS sticker as evidence in the Tangerang attack. They believe Azianzah travelled to greater Jakarta with the intention of attacking police, a frequent target of Islamic militants in Indonesia.

Local media reported that the attack unfolded after police intervened when the man tried to put an IS symbol on a police post.

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Ali Kotarumalos contributed to this story.