Indonesia seizes 3,000 detonators

By Tim Johnston
BBC News, Jakarta

Police in Indonesia have arrested two people and seized some 3,000 detonators and fuses on the island of Borneo.

The detonators were found in the town of Nunukan as they were being transferred from a boat that arrived from Malaysia to an Indonesian ferry.

Police have released little information on who might be behind the contraband.

Borneo is an important key transit point between militant training camps in the southern Philippines and their centres of operation in Indonesia.

Illegal mining

Police arrested the man transporting the detonators and - four days later - a woman who allegedly hired him to move the contraband.

Police said they had found more explosives and detonators in one of the houses on the island.

Borneo is a key link in the supply chain that runs from the lawless southern Philippines where a number of Islamic separatist groups are active.

Almost 250 people have been killed in four major bomb attacks in Indonesia in recent years, and the authorities are particularly of material that might be used in similar attacks in the future.

But it is not only militants who use explosives.

Many fishermen and illegal miners also use home-made bombs to stun fish or break up rocks, and it is possible that these seizures might have a more innocent explanation.