Bali terror plot suspects shot dead

Indonesian police have shot dead five suspected militants said to have been planning attacks on the resort island of Bali, including an assault on a nightclub popular with foreign tourists.

The men, who were shot dead in overnight raids, were linked to the banned Jemaah Islamiah group, which carried out nightclub bombings on Bali in 2002 that killed 202 people, most of them Australian tourists, officials said.

The 2002 attacks were a watershed for Indonesia, which has the world’s largest Muslim population, forcing the secular state to confront the presence of violent militants on its soil. Bali, which is majority Hindu, is a global tourist destination.

The five suspects arrived on Bali on 17 March and surveyed La Vida Loca nightclub in the Seminyak beach resort, about two and a half miles north-west of Kuta, where the 2002 attack took place.

“Last night, we have paralysed five criminal perpetrators who were planning to commit terrorist acts. All the suspects died during the raids because they defied or shot back with pistols at the police officers,” a police spokesman said.

Three were killed in the beach resort area of Sanur and two in the island’s capital, Denpasar. Police said they had recovered two rifles, two ammunition magazines, 48 bullets and a balaclava.