Jakarta: Two alleged Daesh group militants stabbed a police officer to death in western Indonesia, authorities said on Sunday, in the latest assault targeting officials in the world’s most populous Muslim country.
The two attackers shouted “Allahu Akbar”, or God is great, as they entered a security post in North Sumatra’s police headquarters in Medan city where they stabbed a police officer, officials said.
Several police officers fought back against the militants, killing one and critically injuring another.
“We suspect the attackers have links with Daesh and Bahrun Naim, because we found a Daesh flag, books and CDs linked to Daesh in the house of one attacker,” national police spokesman Setyo Wasisto told journalists.
Bahrun Naim, an Indonesian who is fighting with Daesh in Syria, has been accused of directing a series of mostly botched terror plots in his homeland in recent years.
Hundreds of radicals from Indonesia have flocked abroad to fight with Daesh, and the country has seen a surge in plots and attacks linked to the jihadists over the past year.
The attack happened just hours before Eid prayers were held, including at the North Sumatra police headquarters, as part of the Eid Al Fitr celebrations that mark the end of Ramadan.
Police are also investigating whether Sunday’s incident was linked to the recent capture of three militants accused of plotting to attack police, Wasisto added.
In May suicide bombers killed three police officers at a bus station in Jakarta in the deadliest attack in Indonesia since January 2016, when a suicide blast and gun assault claimed by Daesh left four assailants and four civilians dead in the capital.
Indonesia has long struggled with Islamist militancy and has suffered a series of fatal attacks in the past 15 years, including the 2002 Bali bombings that killed 202 people.
A sustained crackdown weakened the country’s most dangerous networks but the emergence of Daesh has proved a potent new rallying cry for radicals.
