JAKARTA (AFP): An armed woman shot dead at Indonesia’s national police headquarters Wednesday (March 31) was an Islamic State (IS) sympathiser, authorities said, citing social media posts she made shortly before the fatal gun battle.
Indonesia has been on high alert in recent days after two suicide bombers alleged members of a pro-IS extremist group blew themselves up at a church in Makassar city on Sulawesi island, wounding about 20 people.
Police outposts have been frequent targets of Indonesian extremists in the past.
On Wednesday afternoon, the 25-year-old woman wearing a niqab face veil and a long black gown entered the police complex in downtown Jakarta and opened fire on officers at the entrance, authorities said.
Images broadcast by local media showed the woman fall to the ground as shots rang out, before lying motionless as police surrounded her body.
“She was a lone wolf who supported the IS ideology and this has been proven by her social media posts,” chief of the Indonesian National Police Listyo Sigit Prabowo told reporters Wednesday evening.
Authorities said they had identified the woman as a university dropout who had left a suicide note at her family home in Jakarta, which they raided after the shootout.
She had posted the IS flag and writings about becoming a martyr on a recently created Instagram account, Prabowo said.
Authorities would probe whether the woman had links to Muslim majority Indonesia’s myriad extremist groups.
The country, which has long struggled with attacks by Islamist militants including the 2002 Bali bombings, has been on edge after the weekend cathedral attack.
A newlywed couple who belonged to pro-Islamic State extremist group Jamaah Ansharut Daulah (JAD) was behind the cathedral blast, police have said.
More than a dozen others suspected in the plot have been arrested in recent days. – New Malaysia Herald
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