September 28 2003 at 10:21AM
Reuters via IOL
Singapore - A new generation of Muslim militants from the Jemaah Islamiah group is plotting suicide attacks on international hotels and expatriate neighbourhoods in Indonesia in December, Singapore's The Sunday Times said.
The newspaper, citing unidentified Indonesian intelligence sources, said 12 Jemaah Islamiah members drawn from six cells planned to turn the festive season in Indonesia into a bloody nightmare.
"International hotels in Jakarta, Surabaya and Medan were picked as one set of targets," the newspaper said. Surabaya is a big city on Java island. Medan is on Sumatra.
"The other comprised residential areas with large expatriate communities," it said.
'International hotels in Jakarta, Surabaya and Medan were picked as one set of targets'
The Jemaah Islamiah has been blamed for the bomb attacks on Bali island in October last year in which 202 people were killed, and for an August blast at luxury hotel in Jakarta that killed 12 people.
The group is seen by some intelligence experts as the southeast Asian wing of Osama bin Laden's al-Qaeda group.
Jemaah Islamiah's operations chief, an Indonesian known as Hambali, was arrested by Thai and United States agents in Thailand in August but The Sunday Times said the new generation of "twenty-something" militants was every bit as "fanatically anti-American" as Hambali.
"Ideologically, the newcomers are no different from their predecessors. They are just as hardline," the paper quoted a senior Indonesian intelligence source as saying.
Indonesian police said last week the man accused of designing the bombs that rocked Bali and the Jakarta hotel was planning to strike again in Jakarta.
Azahari, a 46-year-old British-educated Malaysian engineer accused by authorities in several countries of being the top bomb-maker for the Jemaah Islamiah network, is still on the run and one of the most wanted men in Asia