Bali bomber reported killed in Java

Indonesia: Malaysian terrorist and Bali bomb ringleader Azahari Husin is suspected to have been killed in Indonesia, according to media reports.

Husin was one of Asia's most wanted men.

Several television stations in Indonesia said seven militants were also killed in the encounter in a town in East Java province, although there was no source for their reports.

Batu police chief Sudijono said he had seen the bodies of seven militants he described as "terrorists," although they had not been identified. There was no immediate word on any casualties among the security forces.

Dino Patti Djalal, a spokesman for President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, said it was not clear if Azahari had been killed.

East Java province lies adjacent to the resort island of Bali, where three suicide bombers killed 20 people on October 1.

Indonesian police say Azahari is an electronics expert who designed and supervised the making of the car bomb in the 2002 Bali bomb attacks that killed 202 people, mostly foreign tourists.

They have also accused Azahari of being one of the masterminds behind the 2003 suicide bombing at the JW Marriott Hotel in Jakarta that killed 12 people and a bombing outside the Australian embassy last year that killed 10.

Believed to be in his mid 40s, Azahari holds a doctorate from the University of Reading in Great Britain.

Azahari was a senior Jemaah Islamiah operative. Jemaah Islamiah is a militant Islamic terrorist organization dedicated to the establishment of a fundamentalist Islamic theocracy in Southeast Asia, in particular Indonesia, Singapore, Brunei, Malaysia, and the south of Thailand and the Philippines.