By Xinhua,
Beijing : An attack targeting Westerners in Jakarta was averted when anti-terror police arrested 10 suspected militants and seized a large cache of high-powered bombs, police and media reported Thursday.
Among those detained was a Singaporean who met several times with Osama bin Laden, a senior police officer told The Associated Press on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to talk to the media.
The arrests highlighted the lingering terror threat in Indonesia, which has been stung by a series of suicide bombings blamed on the regional terror group Jemaah Islamiyah since Sept. 11, 2001, including the 2002 attacks on Bali island that left 202 people dead, many of them foreign tourists.
Some of the suspects told police during interrogations that they had initially planned to attack foreign tourists on Sumatra Island, but shifted their target to Jakarta after realizing too many Indonesian lives could have been lost, TVOne quoted anti-terror police as saying.
The Indonesian government has won praise for arresting and convicting hundreds of militants since the Bali attacks, leaving the terror network severely weakened and isolated, with the most recent strike occurring more than 2 1/2 years ago.
At least 22 bombs were seized during raids Wednesday in Palembang, a coastal city on Sumatra, some packed with bullets to maximize the impact of the blast, said a police general, speaking on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to talk to the press.
The arrests began Saturday in the Sumatran village of Sekayu when police captured a Singaporean terror suspect, Abu Hazam, who allegedly met with bin Laden on several occasions and received training in Afghanistan, TVOne and Kompas reported.
The reports said the man, also known as Omar, tipped police off to the whereabouts of two other suspects, Abdul Rahman and an unidentified alleged bomb-maker, who were arrested Monday. Six others were netted Wednesday and a seventh before dawn Thursday.