- Jakarta suicide bombers kill three police officers in bus station attack
Militants linked to Islamic State swept through a southern Philippine city, beheading a police chief, burning buildings, seizing a Roman Catholic priest and his worshippers and raising the black flag of Isis, regional authorities have said.
President Rodrigo Duterte had declared martial law across the southern third of the country – where Marawi city is located – and warned on Wednesday that he may expand it nationwide.
At least 21 people were killed in the fighting, officials said.
As details of the attack in Marawi emerged, fears mounted that the largest Roman Catholic state in Asia could join a growing list of countries grappling with the spread of influence from Isis in Syria and Iraq.
The violence erupted on Tuesday after the army raided the hideout of Isnilon Hapilon, a commander of the Abu Sayyaf militant group that has pledged allegiance to Isis. He is on Washington’s list of most-wanted terrorists with a $5m (£3.9m) reward for information leading to his capture.
The militants called for reinforcements and about 100 gunmen entered Marawi, a mostly Muslim city of 200,000 people on the southern island of Mindanao, according to the defence secretary, Delfin Lorenzana said.
“We are in a state of emergency,” Duterte said on Wednesday after he cut short a trip to Moscow and flew back to Manila, the Philippine capital. “I have a serious problem in Mindanao and the Isis footprints are everywhere.”
He declared martial law for 60 days in Mindanao, home to 22 million people, and vowed to be “harsh”.
“If I think that you should die, you will die,” he said. “If you fight us, you will die. If there is open defiance, you will die. And if it means many people dying, so be it.”
But Duterte said he would not allow abuses and law-abiding citizens had nothing to fear.
In the meantime, two suspected suicide bombers killed three Indonesian police officers and injured 10 people on Wednesday night in twin blasts near a bus station in the eastern part of the capital, police have said.
The blasts went off five minutes apart at Jakarta’s Kampung Melayu terminal, police said.
National police spokesman Setyo Wasisto said three officers had been killed, and that examination of the scene had shown that there appeared to have been two suicide bombers, not one as originally thought. Five officers and five civilians were wounded, he said.
Indonesia has suffered a series of mostly low-level attacks by Islamic State sympathisers in the last 17 months, but Wasisto said police had not confirmed any terrorist motive for Wednesday’s bombing.
“The police officers were on duty to guard a group of people who were holding a parade. The parade hadn’t passed yet when the blast happened,” Wasisto told a news conference.
“The two suspects were both male. Their identities will be released later,” he said.
Authorities in the world’s biggest Muslim-majority nation are increasingly worried about a surge in radicalism, driven in part by a new generation of militants inspired by Islamic State.
In January 2016, four militants killed four people in a gun and bomb assault in the heart of Jakarta.
While most of the attacks since then have been poorly organised, authorities believe about 400 Indonesians have gone to join the militant group in Syria, and could pose a more lethal threat if they come home.
On Wednesday night, heavily armed police cordoned off the area around the bus station with tape to hold back hundreds of onlookers while bomb disposal officers with protective suits examined the area.
Transport minister Budi Karya tweeted that he had asked staff to increase vigilance on the city’s transport network.
Guardian
