The newly founded Tanzim Qaedat-al Jihad group led by Noordin M. Top has apparently decided to target Java for its next attack, after having carried out bomb attacks in Bali, October 1, 2005.

So said police Brigadier General Anton Bachrul Alam who claimed that the information was gleaned from documents seized after a raid on a house in Malang, East Java. However he also claimed that the group’s strength had been seriously weakened due to arrests and killings of its members by the police in recent months.

It has been known for a while that the Muslim terrorist group, formerly part of the Jemaah Islamiyah network, in the past had made some abortive plans to attack a Roman Catholic high school in the south-eastern suburbs of the city of Surabaya in East Java province, as well as the Jewish synagogue in central Surabaya, but this time the police commander refused to say exactly where the attacks were expected to come.

Tags: Java, Terrorism