JAKARTA—A counter-terrorism unit raiding a militant hideout in central Indonesia on Wednesday killed two men suspected by police of involvement in the twin bombings at a church in the southern Philippines in 2019 that killed more than 20 people.
Police said the raid in Makassar in South Sulawesi by the Densus 88 unit led to a fatal shootout with two suspected militants who resisted arrest.
Makassar police chief Witnu Urip Laksana told Reuters separately that the suspects were involved in the bombings of a church on Jolo island in a restive, predominantly Muslim region of the Catholic-majority Philippines.
Police carried out “firm and calculated” action against the two suspects, Witnu said, adding an investigation was ongoing.
Police suspect the men were members of the Islamic State-inspired Jamaah Ansharut Daulah, which has carried out a series of attacks in Indonesia.
Philippine authorities have concluded that the January 2019 church attack was a suicide bombing by an Indonesian couple, with the help of a faction of the local group Abu Sayyaf that has pledged allegiance to the Islamic State.
More than 100 people were also wounded in the incident, which was among the first and so far deadliest suicide bombings in the Philippines, where such attacks were almost unheard of until 2018.
Philippine Defense Secretary Delfin Lorenzana did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Wednesday.
Mindanao in the southern Philippines has for decades been beset by separatist and Maoist conflicts.