JAKARTA, Sept 23 (Reuters) - Indonesia's anti-terrorist
squad arrested 10 suspected Islamic radicals and seized a dozen
home-made bombs from a group planning attacks against security
forces and the government, a police spokesman said on Sunday.
The arrests by the elite Detachment 88 police squad were the
latest sign of a weeks-long crackdown by authorities against
militants. They come almost 10 years after a bomb attack on Bali
killed 202 people, mostly foreign tourists.
Nine people were arrested in Solo, in the centre of Java
island, and another was caught in Melawi in a central region of
Borneo island, national police spokesman Boy Rafli Amar said.
"In an overnight raid on Saturday, the special squad in Solo
also found homemade bombs and explosive materials in their
houses. They defused a bomb afterwards," he told Reuters by
telephone.
Amar said two suspects arrested in Solo had been recruiting
young men and instructing them how to make bombs. The arrests in
Solo led police to make the arrest in Melawi, he said.
The tenth suspect was rounded up in Solo on Sunday.
Indonesia has arrested more than 30 militant suspects since
March and killed seven in raids across the country. All were
alleged to have been plotting attacks against Indonesians.
The Bali bombings represented a watershed for Indonesia,
which has the world's largest Muslim population, forcing the
secular state to confront the presence of violent militants.
(Reporting by Chris Nusatya; Editing by Matthew Bigg and Ron
Popeski)
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