Indonesia arrests two in Java over Aceh militants

Indonesian police have arrested two men on the island of Java who are suspected of supplying weapons to an Islamist group authorities have been hunting in Aceh province, the national police chief said on Monday.

Police have been searching for about 30 members of the group in the heavily forested Lamkebeu area of Aceh on Sumatra island since raiding a suspected militant training camp last month, when books on Jihad, rifles and military uniforms were found.

National Police chief Bambang Hendarso Danuri said 16 members of the group, including the two alleged weapons suppliers, had been arrested, while three had been killed.

Three police officers had also been killed during the raids.

"We continue to track down their networks outside Aceh. For example, the weapons supplier network, we have detained two men in West Java and Jakarta," Danuri said without elaborating.

The police official said the group had no ties to the former separatist Free Aceh Movement (GAM) in Aceh. The staunchly Muslim province suffered a separatist conflict for 29 years before a peace deal was struck with Jakarta in 2005.

"What is clear is that there is no link to GAM. This is purely from a group that was planning something," he said.

Hundreds of officers, including many from the elite anti-terrorism unit Detachment 88, have been deployed in Aceh.

One police officer taking part in the Aceh operations told Reuters that the group they were facing were very determined.

"They are very tough ... because the more we shoot at them the more aggressive they are," he said, declining to be identified.

Separately, police spokesman Sulistyo Ishak said authorities were investigating an internet blog claiming that the group was a branch of al Qaeda operating in Aceh involved in jihad.

The blog (http:alufuq.wordpress.com), access to which is now blocked, claimed to be from Tandzim Al Qoidah Indonesia in Aceh.

Police have said the suspects detained included several who had received training in militant camps abroad and news of the arrests in Java also point to the group having wider links.

Indonesia has been dealing with militant attacks for the past decade from groups such as Jemaah Islamiah, some of whose members trained in Afghanistan, Pakistan and the southern Philippines.

A Saudi man and an Indonesian are on trial in Indonesia in connection with the funding of suicide bombings on luxury hotels in Jakarta last year which killed 11 people, including the suicide bombers.

Tito Karnavian, head of Indonesia's anti-terrorism squad, told Reuters in a recent interview that the investigations into the hotel bombings pointed to the re-establishment of a connection between al Qaeda and local militants.

Al Qaeda helped fund the 2002 Bali bombings and the 2003 J W Marriott hotel bombings in Jakarta, which killed scores of Indonesians and Westerners, police have said previously.

Ishak said police had not yet ruled out the possibility of a link between the Aceh group and a threat to attack oil tankers in the busy Malacca Strait.