Terror threat

Attacks in Indonesia Mark Expansion for Islamic State

Attackers tied to Islamic State marked a new battlefield in the extremist group’s global expansion, terrorizing the Indonesian capital and killing two people in a suicide assault.

The coordinated gunfire-and-bomb attack, in which all five assailants also died, raised fears of a return of Islamist-inspired violence in parts of Asia that had largely subdued an earlier generation of militants.The rise of Islamic Statehas drawn hundreds of Southeast Asia militants to Syria and Iraq—some 600 from Indonesia and Malaysia alone, authorities estimate. Though the numbers are small compared with Western Europe, they are bigger than the cadre of Asian militants that was forged in Afghanistan in an earlier decade.