The leader of an ISIS-linked terrorist network in Indonesia was killed in an exceedingly shootout with security forces, police said Sunday.
Ali Kalora, head of the East Indonesia Mujahideen (MIT), was shot dead Saturday in Sulawesi island’s jungle together with another member identified as Jaka Ramadhan.
Police said they need launched a manhunt for four more MIT terrorists.
“We will keep looking until we get them,” Rudy Sufahriadi, police captain of Central Sulawesi province, said Sunday.
The weekend firefight materialized two months after authorities shot down two suspected members of the group within the same Parigi Moutong district, near the extremist hotbed Poso district.
Designated a terrorist organisation by the us, MIT is among dozens of groups across the Southeast Asian archipelago that have pledged allegiance to ISIS.
After hiding enter the jungles of Sulawesi for years, the network is now estimated to possess just a couple of members. But it’s been accused of plotting several deadly attacks, including last killing four farmers — and reportedly beheading one — in an exceedingly remote village in May.
Kalora took over leadership of MIT after the country’s most-wanted extremist, Santoso, was shot dead by troops in 2016.
Long-haired and gun-toting, Santoso regularly appeared in videos urging people to launch attacks on security forces.
He also recruited members from abroad, including several from China’s mostly Muslim Uighur ethnos.
After Indonesia suffered a string of terrorist attacks within the early 2000s, including the 2002 Bali bombings that killed over 200 people, authorities launched a crackdown that weakened the foremost dangerous networks.
But the country has continued to wrestle with terrorist groups and attacks.
In March, an ISIS-inspired Indonesian couple blew themselves up at a church in Makassar on Sulawesi island, killing themselves and injuring dozens.
