Marriott bomb suspects held

By Rachel Harvey BBC Jakarta correspondent

Police in Indonesia say they have arrested two more suspects in connection with the Marriott hotel bombing in August.

The two men were detained in west Java during a police raid.

One of the two suspects is believed to have helped assemble the car bomb which exploded outside the entrance of the hotel killing 13 people including the bomber.

Security has been greatly tightened since the attack

At least 12 people are now being held in custody in connection with the attack.

The two men were arrested during a pre-dawn raid of a hotel in the town of Cirebon in west Java.

Police say they also found explosive devices during the operation, including pipe bombs.

The two suspects have been identified only as Ismail and Tohir.

They are on the list of five key suspects identified by police shortly after the Marriott hotel bombing.

The remaining three include Noordin Mohammad Top, identified by police as the ringleader of the Marriott attack, and a Malaysian citizen called Azahari Husin, who is accused of assembling both the Marriott explosives and the bombs used in the nightclub attacks in Bali last year.

Indonesia's police chief, Da'i Bachtiar, said he believed that Noordin Mohammad Top and Dr Azahari were nearby when Ismail and Tohir were captured.

"We found a house where the others had stayed," he said, "but they had already escaped."

Intensive efforts are now under way to find them.