JAKARTA, March 19 (Xinhua) -- The Indonesian police on Friday arrested eight suspected terrorists in the country's province of North Sumatra, local provincial police said.
The North Sumatra Police's spokesman Hadi Wahyudi said that these suspected extremists were apprehended by the National Police's Densus 88 counterterrorism squad in separate operations in the province's two cities of Medan and Tanjung Balai.
"Two were (arrested) in Tanjung Balai, and six were in Medan," he said, quoted by state-run news agency Antara.
Recently, 22 suspected terrorists with alleged ties to a homegrown terrorist group Jemaah Islamiyah (JI) were held by the counterterrorism unit in East Java province.
On Thursday, those suspected members of the group affiliated with Islamic State were flown under the guard of the police to Jakarta for further questioning.
The Jemaah Islamiyah group was behind the 2002 Bali bombings which killed more than 200 people on the holiday island. The group was declared an illegal organization in 2018. Enditem