The body recovered in Tawi-Tawi that has been the subject of forensic examinations for almost a month now may not be that of the alleged Bali bomber Dulmatin.

An Agence Frence Presse report on Monday said that Indonesian police say that the body is not that of a key Islamic militant wanted over the 2002 Bali bombings, the Jakarta Post reported Monday.

Philippine authorities had said the body was believed to be Dulmatin, who was thought to have been wounded in a clash with government troops in the region in January.

"The team has returned from the Philippines and we affirm that the exhumed body was not that of Dulmatin," the newspaper's Web site quoted Indonesian national police spokesman Anton Bachrul Alam as saying.

Dulmatin was once a senior figure in the radical Jemaah Islamiyah (JI) movement and is believed to have been hiding in the southern Philippines for the past five years.

Alam said police would wait for DNA test results to be released by their Philippine counterparts for final confirmation that the body, found in a shallow grave on Tawi-Tawi island in February, did not belong to the militant.

Dulmatin is accused of helping JI plan and carry out the 2002 Bali bombings, which killed 202 people on the Indonesian holiday island, most of them foreign tourists.

Sidney Jones, an expert on JI, said last month that JI contacts in Indonesia would have likely known if Dulmatin was dead.

Meanwhile Leila Vicente of ABS-CBN Zamboanga reported that the Armed Forces’ Western Mindanao Command (WesMinCom) confirmed that the result of the DNA test on the body recovered in Tawi-Tawi could not yet be released.

According to WesMinCom, the tissue and blood samples taken form the children of the alleged Bali bomber were unreliable to verify it the body was indeed Dulmatin’s.

The military said the samples for comparison should have been taken from his mother or a sibling.

According to a source, however, the result of the first forensic examination undertaken by the Philippine National Police and US Federal Bureau of Investigation turned negative.

The WesMinCom would not also confirm the information that the body recovered in Tawi-Tawi could be that of a certain Jordanian translator.

Members of the Military Intelligence Group-9 exhumed the cadaver in Sitio Salisit, Barangay Balimbing in Panglima Sugala town on February 18.

The cadaver was first brought to a temporary US military facility inside the WestMinCom headquarters in Zamboanga City.

A military official said then that the result of the DNA test will be out after two weeks.

The body, which bore wounds in the head, chest and right foot, was exhumed after the military received information that Dulmatin was killed and buried at the site following an encounter in Tawi-Tawi.

Lt. Gen. Nelson Allaga, WestMinCom chief, had earlier said that military informants identified the body as that of Dulmatin, who has a $10-million bounty offer from the US government.

The official said the circumstances leading to Dulmatin's alleged death started when troops clashed with suspected terrorists in Panglima Sugala on January 31.

The military earlier claimed killing Abu Sayyaf bandit group sub-commander Radi Upao in the encounter, but admitted that Dulmatin escaped.

However, troops were able to arrest another Abu Sayyaf member identified only as Alpha Moha, who told authorities that Dulmatin could have been killed in the Tawi-Tawi encounter.

The military had been hunting down the alleged Bali bomber in Tawi-Tawi. It believes that Dulmatin partner, Umar Patek, also a ranking operative of Jemaah Islamiyah terror group, is hiding in Sulu province.

Dulmatin is also known as Ammar Usman. He and Patek are both suspects in the 2002 bombing in Bali, that left dozens of tourists dead.