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JAKARTA, Indonesia (AP) — Unidentified gunmen killed two police officers near Indonesia’s capital, days after security forces made multiple arrests and killed suspects in anti-terrorism raids, police said Saturday.
Two men on a motorbike followed an officer who was heading to a police precinct in Tangerang, on the outskirts of Jakarta, on Friday night. They shot him dead and fled, said National Police spokesman Maj. Gen. Ronny Frengky Sompie .
They were pursued by a police car that hit the motorbike before plunging into a drain. Sompie said the gunmen then killed another officer in the car. Police returned fire and apparently injured one of the men, but they managed to escape on a villager’s motorbike that they stole.
It was the second attack against police in less than two weeks. Two gunmen on a motorbike killed a police officer on Aug. 7 when Indonesian Mulims were preparing the Eid al-Fitr holiday to mark the end of the fasting month of Ramadan.
"There are similarities between the two attacks," Sompie said. "We are mobilizing our forces now to search for the perpetrators to reveal their motives and their possible links with terrorist groups."
He said police are investigating the damaged motorbike left by the gunmen near the scene.
The latest police raid involved Muhammad Syaiful Syahbani, 26, a suspected fund raiser in an alleged plot to attack the Myanmar Embassy to protest that country’s treatment of Muslims. He was arrested Aug. 9 in Yogyakarta on main Java island.
Indonesia, the world’s most populous Muslim nation, has been hit by a string of terrorist attacks since 2002, when Muslim militants carried out suicide bombings on two crowded nightclubs on the resort island of Bali, killing 202 people.
Hundreds of militants have been arrested and convicted since then, making the government and its security forces a target.
