Indonesian authorities say they have not shot dead a top militantant in the country. According to forensic tests, a man killed in a shootout over the weekend was not Islamic militant Noordin Mohammad Top.

Top is believed to be the mastermind behind last month's near simultaneous suicide attacks on Jakarta's JW Marriott and Ritz-Carlton hotels, which killed nine people and wounded 53.

[Eddy Suparwoko, Disaster Victim ID Unit]:
"We have compared the DNA sample with his family in Johor, as all of you know, and the family in Cilacap and another family in Kladen, and none of it matched."

Mr. Suparwoko was referring to Top's three families, including his first wife and children in Malaysia.

Media reports quoting police sources have suggested Top probably fled the farmhouse in Central Java about two hours before police raided it.

News that Top has managed to elude police again and remains on the run is a blow for Indonesian security forces.

The man killed in Central Java was identified as Ibrohim, who worked as a florist in the Ritz-Carlton Hotel in Jakarta and is suspected to be the inside man on the attacks.

[Eddy Suparwoko, Disaster Victim ID Unit]:
"After that, we compared with the family in Cilimus and their two children, son and daughter, and his wife, and the result is a 100 per cent match. We concluded it is Ibrohim."

Cilimus is a district in Cirebon in West Java.

A national police spokesman described him as the "field commander" for the operations. Police said he had been a member of Jemaah Islamiah, or JI, since 2000.

Ibrohim was killed after an 18-hour siege in an isolated farmhouse in central Java. There was intense speculation that the suspect killed was Top but there were growing doubts over the past few days.

Top, who formed a violent wing of the JI militant network, is blamed for a series of attacks including on the JW Marriott in Jakarta in 2003, the Australian Embassy in Jakarta in 2004 and in Bali in 2005.

He is among the most-wanted of JI's members, with a 100-thousand dollar bounty on his head.