Indonesian Police Say They’ve Arrested Three in Jakarta Attacks, ISIS Flag Found

Five attackers – suicide bombers and gunmen – were also killed in the chaos outside a Starbucks cafe and police post on busy Jl Thamrin.

Indonesia’s national police chief Gen. Badrodin Haiti says all activities of the group responsible for the Thursday attack in Jakarta were funded by the Islamic State movement.

The Islamic State group claimed the attack was carried out by its “soldiers” against citizens from the “crusader coalition”, referring to the US-led alliance combating the jihadists.

“Police raided several locations in the early hours of Friday morning” and made arrests in the Jakarta suburb of Depok, NPR’s Anthony Kuhn reports.

Indonesian police stand near a boarded up police box that was hit during yesterday’s gun and bomb attack in central Jakarta January 15, 2016.

The explosion occurred after about 25 anti-terror squad police stormed the cafe.

The civilians killed on Thursday were an Indonesian and a Canadian. Two men on a motorbike also destroyed a police post in another suicide bomb attack that left four officers severely injured.

Regional nations have been warning for months of the possibility of attack, mirroring concerns expressed by European authorities fearful of the intentions of people returning home from conflict.

“Now we are sweeping in and outside Java, because we have captured several members of their group, and have identified them”, national police spokesman Anton Charliyan said.

The Russian Embassy in Jakarta will work as normal, a Russian press attache told RIA Novosti by phone. The bloodiest attack by Islamic extremists in Indonesia – and in all of Asia – was in 2002, when a nightclub bombing on the resort island of Bali killed 202 people, mostly foreigners.

The atomization of militant networks was evident in Thursday’s attack, with its low death toll, basic weapons and unsophisticated execution that betrayed limited resources and capacity.

As many as 800 Indonesians have joined the IS group in Syria and Iraq, according to Said Agil Siraj, chairman of Indonesia’s biggest Muslim organization of Nahdlatul Ulema.

The Indonesian Catholic bishops’ conference has not issued a statement about the attack yet but “we at the commission see the incident as being a lesson for us”, said Father Siswantoko.

Jakarta’s chief of police says Indonesia is hunting terror cells believed to have been involved in the attack on the capital.

Indonesian President Joko “Jokowi” Widodo, who is on a working visit in the West Java town of Cirebon, has ordered security forces to hunt down the perpetrators and their network behind the attacks in Jakarta.

Indonesia has the world’s largest Muslim population, the vast majority of whom practice a moderate form of Islam.

Supporters of the Islamic State group circulated a claim of responsibility for the attack on Twitter late Thursday. “It was just a Paris-inspired attack without being well prepared”, he told The Associated Press.

European Union High Representative and Vice-President Federica Mogherini underlined that Thursday’s attack was a tragic reminder that the threat of terrorism was global and has to be tackled globally.