One of the most wanted men in Asia and a prime suspect in the suicide bombings on Bali was on the Indonesian resort island shortly before last weekend's deadly blasts, a police official said on Friday.
Police narrowly missed catching Malaysian Noordin M. Top, 35, during a pre-dawn raid on Friday in the central Java village of Purwantoro, Abdul Madjid, police chief in the city of Solo, told Reuters.
Police and an anti-terrorist force arrived at around 3 am in Purwantoro, about a two-hour drive from Solo, but were too late to nab Top, Madjid said.
"He stayed there on September 26th and had been to Bali and returned back. Hopefully, we will sweep again tonight," Madjid said.
Noordin and fellow Malaysian Azahari bin Husin are the suspected masterminds behind Saturday's attacks on three packed restaurants in Bali that killed 22 - including the three suicide bombers - and wounded 146.
Indonesian authorities say the two were also behind the October, 2002, bombings of night-clubs in Bali's Kuta Beach that killed 202 people and suicide car-bombings at a Jakarta luxury hotel in 2003 and outside the Australian embassy in the Indonesian capital in 2004.
Top and Azahari have eluded capture for years by staying in safe houses in Indonesia, the world's fourth-most populous Muslim country.
Top and Azahari might have formed a violent faction with new personnel within Jemaah Islamiah (JI), an al Qaeda-linked group blamed for the car-bombs on Bali and in Jakarta, police and experts said. "They (the bombers) come from a new group," Bali police chief Made Mangku Pastika said on Friday. "A new generation means that (they) are not known by the old group," he said, although he did not rule out links with JI.
Experts say numerous arrests in connection with the previous bombings has destroyed much of the old JI structure.
Police have questioned at least 115 people, but no one has been arrested or charged in Saturday's attacks.
A Western diplomat in Jakarta also suggested the bombers did not necessarily come from JI. "There (are) also of course a lot of other people out there trained in the camps," said the diplomat, who declined to be identified.
But the fact that the latest bombings were from explosives carried in backpacks instead of from car-bombs did not necessarily mean a group other than JI had emerged, either, he said.
The bombers undoubtedly had help, police officials said. Indonesia, aided by foreign law enforcement officers and its own military, has launched a huge manhunt for others who might have been involved in the suicide blasts. Vice President Jusuf Kalla told reporters on Friday the suicide-bombing trend was disturbing.
"Why do they kill their own people who have done nothing wrong?" he told reporters after Friday Muslim prayers in Jakarta.