ISIL cells in nearly all Indonesian provinces, says military chief

General Gatot Nurmantyo said late on Monday that there are clandestine sleeper cells across the sprawling Indonesian archipelago underscored concerns about ISIL’s growing influence in South East Asia.

Suspected militants attend a sentencing hearing in Jakarta, Indonesia on June 7. The country’s military chief said there are ISIL cells across all of Indonesia. Achmad Ibrahim / AP Photo
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JAKARTA // ISIL has a presence in nearly all provinces across Indonesia, the world’s largest Muslim-majority country, the military chief in Jakarta has said.

Gen Gatot Nurmantyo said late on Monday that the presence of sleeper cells across the sprawling Indonesian archipelago underscored concerns about ISIL’s growing influence in South-East Asia.

“After observation, we see that in almost every province there are already ISIL cells, but they are sleeper cells,” Gen Nurmantyo said.

He singled out the predominantly Christian province of Papua as one of the few exceptions.

“These sleeper cells can easily join up with other radical cells,” he said.

Governments across the region have been on high alert since militants overran a city in the southern Philippines about three weeks ago.

The Philippine military, which has carried out air strikes and raids in Marawi city, said on Tuesday the militants still controlled about 20 per cent of the city.

Indonesian and Malaysian officials have stepped up security to stop militants escaping from Marawi over their shared borders with the Philippines.

“It’s easy to jump from Marawi to Indonesia and we must all beware of sleeper cells being activated in Indonesia,” Gen Nurmantyo said.

South-East Asian nations believe the region is home to thousands of ISIL sympathisers, and Indonesia and Malaysia have detained scores of suspected militants in recent years.

Singapore said on Monday that it had detained an assistant childcare worker suspected of trying to join ISIL, the first woman to be held on such charges in Singapore.

A gun-and-bomb attack that killed four people in Jakarta last year marked the first ISIL strike in the region.

There has since been a string of small attacks in Indonesia, the latest of which were twin suicide bombings at a Jakarta bus station, which killed three police officers last month.

* Reuters