Jakarta (ANTARA News) - Police will try to arrest Santoso, the suspected leader of a terrorist group that has attacked the police in Central Sulawesi, alive, the National Police chief Sutarman said here on Tuesday.

His statement followed a gun fight between the police and the group members in Poso on Monday, which wounded two policemen.

The police had arrested two men suspected to be Santosos couriers, known as Rodik and Aji alias Syuaib.

"Following the arrest of the two men, we may be able to find where the group members have been hiding in the forest by asking them to lead us there," he said after inaugurations for the new national police deputy chief commissioner General Badrodin Haiti at the National Police Headquarters.

He noted that the police had discovered ammunition and a bomb in a hut at the location.

"We are now searching for them on the slope of the mountain where they usually conduct training," he said.

National Polices head of public relations division Brigadier General Boy Rafli Amar had previously said 10 to 15 armed men from the group were involved in a gun fight with the police on Monday.

Amar remarked that the group may have assisted Zainul Arifin in his suicide bomb attack on the Poso resort police on June 3, 2013, and also participated in the gun fight that led to the death of First Agent Putu Satria on February 5, this year.(*)

Editor: Heru Purwanto
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