One of Southeast Asia's most wanted Islamic militants, Malaysian Azahari bin Husin, was killed along with several other suspects in a fierce gunbattle with Indonesian police yesterday, officials said.
National police chief General Sutanto said Azahari might have been shot dead by police or could have killed himself after a crack anti-terrorism unit surrounded his villa hideout in the town of Batu in East Java province.
"It was Azahari," Mr Sutanto told reporters in the East Java city of Malang, not far from Batu, when asked if the Malaysian was among those killed.
Dubbed the "demolition man" by Malaysian newspapers, Azahari was the suspected brains behind several bomb attacks on Western targets in Indonesia and the top bomb maker in Jemaah Islamiah, a shadowy network seen as the regional arm of al Qaeda.
Indonesian police say the electronics expert designed and supervised the making of the car bomb that caused the most damage in the 2002 bomb attacks on the resort island of Bali that killed 202 people, mostly foreign tourists.
Police gave conflicting figures on the number of militants killed during the gunbattle, with some putting the total at seven and others at three.
SCTV station said Azahari might have blown himself up.
National police spokesman Aryanto Budihardjo earlier said the militants shot at police and hurled 11 explosive devices at them when they surrounded the villa yesterday afternoon. Other officials said the militants threw grenades.
Mr Budihardjo said police had yet to search the entire villa because it was booby-trapped with bombs.
One policeman had been wounded by gunfire, he said.
Azahari's death will be a boost for President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, who has been hit by a stream of bad news in recent months, including a worsening bird flu outbreak, rocketing inflation and unhappiness over his cabinet's performance.
Police have stepped up their hunt for militants including Azahari and other members of Jemaah Islamiah, which has been blamed for a series of bomb attacks in Indonesia. Azahari had long been believed to be hiding in Indonesia, police had said.
East Java province lies adjacent to Bali, where three suicide bombers killed 20 people on October 1 in the latest attack.