Indonesia foils plot to kill president, foreigners: police

Indonesian police said Friday they had foiled a plot by militants to kill President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono and foreigners in an attack during an independence day celebration on August 17.

"They planned to target Indonesian president (Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono), state officials and foreign guests attending the ceremony," national police chief Bambang Hendarso Danuri told a press conference.

He said that the planned attack was inspired by one carried out by the Islamist militants who killed 166 people in Mumbai, India, in November 2008.

The Indonesia militants "planned to launch a series of assassinations in Java and Jakarta with their specific target foreigners, especially Americans, and the Indonesian president," he said.

They also planned to lay siege to hotels, "copying what had occurred in Mumbai," he said, adding that if the attack had succeeded the militants would have "declared Indonesia as an Islamic state."

The police chief was speaking at a briefing on raids carried out by counter-terror police after the discovery of a terrorist training facility in Aceh, in northern Sumatra island, in February.

Danuri said 58 terror suspects have been arrested and 13 people killed in the raids over the past three months.

Danuri said that one of the arrested suspects was set to collect firearms and grenade launcher from an Islamist stronghold on Mindano, the main island in the southern Philippines, to be used in the planned attack.

Experts said that recent police raids found that terrorists in Indonesia may be shifting their strategy from bombings to military-style shootouts.

"It is the most effective way to target the foreigners without killing Indonesian civilians," Noor Huda Ismail from the Institute for International Peace Building told AFP.

He added the militants' "dream" was to target US President Barack Obama, who was expected to visit Indonesia in March and is now expected in June.

On March 9 police killed the alleged leader of the Aceh group, Dulmatin, who was considered one of the masterminds of the 2002 nightclub bombings in Bali that killed 202 people, mostly Western tourists.

Dulmatin had been a leader of regional terror network Jemaah Islamiyah (JI) but analysts believe the Aceh group was a new, more extreme outfit which combined militants from various Islamist organisations around Southeast Asia.

JI, an Al Qaeda-inspired group whose mission is to create a Muslim caliphate across Southeast Asia, is blamed for multiple terror attacks across Indonesia, including the 2002 carnage in Bali and attacks on Jakarta hotels last year.