At least four people have been killed during a police operation against suspected militants² on the island of Java, reports from Indonesia say.

印度尼西亚报道，爪哇岛至少四人在警察对武装激进分子的打击行动中丧生。

The reports say armed police raided a house in the outskirts³（郊区） of the central city of Solo that is believed to be a militant¹ stronghold.

Witnesses say they heard an explosion and gunfire coming from the house.

Some reports say the target was Urwah - an associate of the wanted militant, Noordin Mohammed Top.

Urwah is believed to have been killed in the raid, although this has not been confirmed by the authorities.

Unconfirmed reports have also raised the possibility that Noordin was hit in the raid.

Twin suicide bomb attacks on the JW Marriott and Ritz-Carlton hotels in Jakarta in July killed nine people and injured scores of others.

On raids in Cilacap, central Java, in July, police said they found bomb-making material at an Islamic boarding school, and explosives buried in the garden of a house of Noordin's father-in-law.

In an 8 August raid and 17-hour siege（包围，围攻）, police claimed they had killed Noordin, only to admit some hours later that he had slipped through their fingers again.

Noordin is wanted for plotting the bombings in Bali in 2002 and 2005, which killed 202 people, and other attacks in Indonesia.

Noordin was said to be a key financier for the militant Islamic group Jemaah Islamiah, but is now thought to have set up his own splinter group.

Indonesian police have launched a massive manhunt（搜索） for the elusive⁴（难懂的，难捉摸的） fugitive⁵（逃亡者，亡命者）, the BBC's Karishma Vaswani in Jakarta says.