The ruthless and enigmatic Noordin, wanted in connection with numerous deadly bombings including the 2002 Bali nightclub blast, died along with four others during a house raid, police said.

Police also arrested three others and recovered several guns, some grenades and eight bags of explosive materials.

Noordin's undoing may have been the result of his multiple marriages that he consummated during his years on the run, Indonesian media report.

The search for Noordin took on an added urgency after the July suicide bombings at Jakarta's Marriott and Ritz-Carlton hotels of which he was suspected of masterminding.

Among the dead from the breakfast-time bombings were several foreigners, and many of the injured were high-ranking business people.

The Marriott and Ritz-Carlton bombings were the first major incidents in Indonesia since August 2003, when the same Marriott hotel suffered a car-bomb attack leaving 12 people dead and 150 injured.

But the country's worst attack came in October 2002 when a bomb exploded in a nightclub on the tourist island of Bali, killing 202 people, of which 152 were foreigners, and injuring 240.

The head of the Indonesian police, Gen. Bambang Hendarso Danuri, said Noordin's confirmed death was "a blessing from God in this holy month."

Local media reported people hearing explosions and gunfire at around 7 a.m. during the nine-hour siege of the terrorist hideout, a house on the outskirts Surakarta, also called Solo City, in the center of Java Island. Police have long battled suspected militants in Solo, in particular the Jemaah Islamiyah organization and its splinter group led by Noordin.

Because the Malaysian-born Noordin, 41, had strong ties to al-Qaida, his confirmed death is a relief to police who believed they had killed him during an earlier raid in the town of Temanggung, Central Java, around 250 miles southeast of Jakarta.

After that 17-hour standoff police said they had to carry out DNA testing to be sure the badly mutilated body of a dead man was Noordin and that test results would take several weeks.

It turned out the dead person was that of a florist who had worked in the Marriott and Ritz-Carlton hotels and who acted as an insider for Noordin, helping to plot the attacks.

Police said they had verified the identity of the man killed during the Surakarta raid through fingerprints.

Noordin had strong ties to al-Qaida and was thought to be the organization's lieutenant in Southeast Asia at one time.

Police are not saying how they suspected that Noordin was in the house, but there is speculation that he might have been tracked down through his latest bride.

Noordin was a man used to being on the run and who could create a network of sympathizers wherever he went, especially by marrying local girls.

A report in the Jakarta Post at the end of August noted that police were verifying intelligence that Noordin had married again, this time to a 19-year-old woman in the town of Pandeglang, western Java, only days after one of his lieutenants was killed in a police raid in the town of Temanggung.

"We've sent officers there," National Police chief detective Susno Duadji told local media. "If it's true, then we'll find his wife and track him down from there."

The family of one of Noordin's wives, Munfiatun, was interviewed by media at their home in central Java after police confirmed his death. "I don't want to comment about Noordin's death, no comment," Munfiatun's sister said, according to a report in the Jakarta Globe.

Munfiatun, a university graduate and also known as Fitri, had spoken to the press after the terrorism raid in Temanggung. She said she no longer wanted to be associated with her former husband.

She married Noordin in June 2004, but Noordin disappeared soon after. Police arrested her and she served three years in prison for hiding a terrorist. After being released she came to live with her parents and is now a teacher giving private lessons to elementary and high school students.

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