CANBERRA - The militant group Jemaah Islamiyah's top bomb technician Dulmatin was killed in police raids in Jakarta, Indonesia's President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono said in Australia on Wednesday.

"Today I can announce to you that after a successful police raid against the terrorists hiding out in Jakarta yesterday, we can confirm that one of those that was killed was Dulmatin, one of the top Southeast Asian terrorists," Yudhoyono told Australia's parliament in Canberra.

Police sources earlier said two raids in Pamulang, in Banten province, were linked to a series of assaults on suspected Islamist militants in Aceh province and had been targeting Dulmatin, a fugitive member of militant group Jemaah Islamiyah.

The raids on the southern outskirts of Jakarta come ahead of a visit by US President Barack Obama to the world's most populous Muslim nation on March 20-22.

Indonesian Dulmatin, an electronics specialist who also trained in Afghanistan, is wanted over the 2002 Bali bombings which killed 202 people and was believed to have been hiding in the southern Philippines.

The United States had offered a $10 million (6 million pound) reward for information on Dulmatin, who is said to have been wounded after escaping a raid by Philippine security forces in 2006.

Dulmatin was thought to be working with the Abu Sayyaf group in the Philippines, said Noor Huda Ismail, an Indonesian expert on radical Islamist groups.

"It would be a major blow for the violent movement in Indonesia if it was Dulmatin. However, it would also send a disturbing signal to us that there are many terrorists who manage to enter Indonesia from abroad," Ismail said.

Ismail said Dulmatin had the capability to succeed Noordin Mohammad Top, a Malaysian-born militant and bomb maker killed by police last year during a raid in central Java.