JAKARTA (Reuters) - Indonesian police said on Wednesday they had arrested five members of a militant Islamist cell who were planning to blow up an oil storage facility in north Jakarta and seized explosives and weapons.
The five were suspected of links to Jemaah Islamiah and related militant organizations and had advanced bomb-making skills, the police said.
"We conclude that several hardline groups have merged and are conducting terrorism," national police spokesman Sulistyo Ishak said.
The suspects were caught in Jakarta and Bogor, West Java, in a series of raids starting Tuesday morning, Ishak added.
The police said the suspects -- Rusli Mardani alias Wahyu, Nurhasani alias Hasan, Imam Basari alias Basar, Muntasir, and Budiman -- were members of various Muslim hardline groups.
Police also discovered 2.7 kg (5.952 lbs) of TNT, weapons and ammunitions, as well as a print-out for bomb circuit boards.
The design for the circuit boards was similar to those made by Dr. Azahari, one of the top bomb experts in Jemaah Islamiah who died in 2005, but had incorporated faster switches, Ishak said.
Some of the men detained are linked to Southeast Asia's most wanted militant, Noordin Mohammad Top, according to a police source involved in one of the raids.
Malaysian-born Top is accused of masterminding a series of deadly bombings, including blasts in Bali in 2005 that killed more than 20 people.
(Reporting by Olivia Rondonuwu; Editing by Sara Webb and Alex Richardson)
