Asia terror chief reported killed
Foreign Desk Report

JAKARTA—Master bomb-maker, Azahari Husin, one of Asia’s top terror suspects and most wanted men, blew himself up after being cornered by Indonesian police.
Azahari, a Malaysian national from the al-Qaeda linked Jemaaah Islamiyah (JI) militant network known as the “Demolition Man,” reportedly set off explosives after a shootout with police in his remote hideaway of Batu in East Java.
If confirmed, his death would be a major coup for Indonesian security services against JI — which was suspected in another deadly bombing on the resort island of Bali last month.
Karni Ilyas, an Indonesian journalist who said he accompanied a police anti-terror unit when it entered Azahari’s house, told ANTV channel that Azahari was dead.
“The body was in pieces but his face could still be recognised by two members of the anti-terrorist unit from Jakarta,” Ilyas said. “He blew himself up together with the house”.
A spokesman for President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono said: “It could not yet be confirmed that Azahari was in the house.” Police could not be reached for comment. Azahari and his Malaysian compatriot Noordin Mohammad Top are wanted for key roles in the October 2002 attacks on Bali nightclubs that left 202 people dead, as well as last month’s attack and several other deadly blasts.
Ilyas said people at the house in Batu, some 700 kilometres (400 miles) east of the capital Jakarta, fired shots when police ordered them to come out, wounding one policeman. The fugitives then blew themselves up. Police entered what remained of the house and saw three bodies as well as further wiring, so they retreated, fearing another explosion, he said.
National Police Chief General Sutanto was due at the site at around 9:30pm (1430 GMT), state news agency Antara said. Azahari, in his late forties, studied in Australia for four years in the late 1970s and became a lecturer at Malaysia’s University of Technology before dropping out of sight during a crackdown on Islamic militants in 2001.
Azahari left his wife with the words that he had the greater cause of God to serve, security sources say, speculating that his move to radical Islam could have been prompted by his wife developing throat cancer in the early 1990s. While some reports of the previously shadowy Azahari say he trained in bomb-making in Afghanistan, he is believed to have honed his skills with Muslim separatists in Mindanao in the southern Philippines in 1999.
Security officials say he is the author of the JI bomb manual, and that he was widely named as a possible successor to JI operations chief Hambali, an Indonesian arrested in Thailand in 2003 and now in US custody.