Noordin Top killed

08 August, 2009 07:18:00 editor

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South-east Asia’s most wanted terrorist, Noordin Mohammad Top (40) is reportedly killed in raids Indonesia police carried out in Central Java on early Friday (Aug 7). He is believed to have master minded July 17th suicide bomb attacks on Jakarta’s JW Marriott and Ritz Carlton hotels that had left seven dead. Local media reports quoting police said the Malaysia born Noordin who heads his own Jemaah Islamiyah faction was taken out during police action in Temanggung district. The raid on a remote house in rice fields had started at about 5 pm local time with sporadic exchanges of automatic weapons continuing for several hours. Noordin is believed to be one of the four occupants of the farm house at the time of the raid. Local TV stations said he had been killed in the operation.

Noordin, who has evaded Indonesia's largest manhunt for more than six years, is a bomb-maker by training and is understood to have forged ties with al-Qaeda. He is the chief suspect in all of Indonesia's major terrorist attacks- the 2002 bombings on Bali, an attack on the Marriott Hotel in 2003, a blast outside the Australian Embassy in 2004, and triple suicide bombings on restaurants in Bali in 2005. These four attacks claimed more than 240 lives, many of them western tourists.

Riduan Isamuddin, generally known as Hambali, the operational chief of Jemaah Islamiyah and an associate of Osama bin Laden, has been in US custody since 2003. And Noordin’s brother-in-law is in jail convicted in connection with the 2002 Bali bombings.

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