KUALA LUMPUR: Police conducting a raid on a settlement of illegal Indonesian immigrants near Desa Sri Hartamas here found industrial-grade explosives and weapons at the site, and have not ruled out terrorist involvement.
The explosives, which included six sticks of industrial-grade C4 called Emulex and four wire detonators, were found carefully stashed under the floor of one of the settlement’s huts.
Police also found more than 30 machetes, crudely-made swords, knives and sickles hidden around the settlement.
Emulex is a water-based emulsion explosive usually used in mining, quarrying, road and railway construction, and tunnelling.
Brickfields OCPD Asst Comm Wan Abdul Bari Wan Abdul Khalid said a team from the Travers police station had initially conducted the raid on Thursday evening to weed out the illegals, after monitoring the site for several weeks.
“An initial routine search revealed several weapons hidden throughout the settlement,” he said, adding that the explosives were found when a second search operation was carried out Friday.
The settlement, hidden in the wooded hills behind Desa Sri Hartamas, is believed to have been home to about 10 Indonesian families.
ACP Wan Abdul Bari said most of the residents at the settlement escaped before the raid as they had spotted the police team moving towards them.
“We managed to apprehend three of them, in their 30s, including a woman,” he said, adding that none had proper travel documents.
He said police did not rule out the possibility that terrorists were living in the settlement, which housed about 20 to 30 crudely-built wooden huts that had access to electricity and clean water stolen from a nearby construction site.
The site bore signs of family life, like clothes hanging on clotheslines, baby walkers, gas stoves which were left hastily by its former residents, and even several photo albums with family pictures in them.
Locals in the area said the settlement had been there about three years and had grown in size recently.
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