09 May 2018•Update: 10 May 2018
By Pizaro Gozali and Muhammad Latief
JAKARTA
Indonesian authorities on Wednesday confirmed five police officers and an inmate were killed in a prison riot Tuesday night in West Java.
"We can confirm the incident led to several casualties. Six people died over the course of events. Five of them were our colleagues and one victim was an inmate we were forced to neutralize as he attempted to grab an officer’s weapon," national police spokesman Muhammad Iqbal told reporters.
According to reports, the standoff developed into a hostage situation between inmates and prison officials at the National Police's Mobile Brigade Mako Brimob detention center in Depok, which houses imprisoned Daesh militants.
Police officer Iwan Sarjana was reportedly held captive by prison inmates and the police were allegedly in negotiations to defuse the situation.
Previously, terror group Daesh, through its media wing Amaq agency, claimed its fighters have taken down Indonesia’s anti-terror squad.
"That is simply not true," said Iqbal, the police spokesman.
“That is just how these terrorists spread fear.”
The Coordinating Minister for Political, Legal, and Security Affairs Wiranto, who, like many Indonesians, uses only one name, said the prison riot at Mako Brimob was an "urgent incident” that needs "special attention".
"However, we have to be careful and deliberate in dealing with this. We cannot be rash because it involves national security,” Wiranto explained.
Clashes at the detention center came just one day after the National Police arrested three individuals in Bogor, also in West Java, for supposedly planning a string of attacks on police stations across the province.
