JAKARTA (Reuters) - Indonesia will execute three Islamist militants convicted of the 2002 Bali bombings that killed 202 people in early November, a government official said on Friday.

The men -- Imam Samudra, Amrozi and Mukhlas, also known as Ali Ghufron -- were sentenced to death in 2003 for their roles in the nightclub bombings on the holiday island.

The attacks by the Southeast Asian militant group Jemaah Islamiah (JI) were intended to scare away foreigners as part of their drive to make Indonesia, the world's most populous Muslim nation, part of a larger Islamic caliphate.

"The Indonesian attorney general office decided that the plan to execute Amrozi, Imam Samudra and Ali Gufron will be conducted in early November 2008," Jasman Pandjaitan, spokesman for the attorney general's office, told reporters.

The executions will take place on the island of Nusakambangan, where the three men are being held in a maximum security prison, officials said.

"I don't know what to say," Sumarno, a relative of Amrozi and Mukhlas, wrote in a telephone text message to Reuters.

Metro TV station quoted Khozin, who is the brother of Amrozi and Mukhlas, saying that he regretted the decision to hasten the execution process.

Amrozi, Mukhlas and Imam Samudra, who were convicted for playing key roles in the bombings, have refused to seek clemency from Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono after the Supreme Court rejected their final appeals, saying they want to die as martyrs.

In an interview with Reuters late last year, the militants said they regretted only that some Muslims were killed in the blasts.

The two blasts on Bali's Kuta strip on October 12, 2002 -- one at Paddy's Bar and the other at the Sari Club -- killed 202 people, including 88 Australians and 38 Indonesian citizens, and dealt a severe blow to the island's tourist industry.

TRAVEL WARNING

The Australian government on Friday advised its citizens to reconsider the need to travel to Indonesia, including the popular resort island, citing the "very high" threat of attacks.

"There have been recent arrests of high level terrorist operatives in Indonesia, but we assess terrorists are continuing to plan attacks," the government said in a warning on the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade website.

In an earlier statement from their lawyers, the condemned men said their blood would "become the light for the faithful ones and burning hell fire for the infidels and hypocrites."

Instead of pushing Indonesia to cut ties with countries such as the United States and Australia, the attacks seem to have deepened them.

The Bali bombings, and other attacks on the island and in the capital Jakarta, helped push Indonesia into a closer security relationship with Washington and Canberra as the government sought help in tackling Islamist militants.

Although there have been no major bomb attacks since 2005, Indonesia is still considered at risk. In his annual address to parliament on August 15, President Yudhoyono warned that the "country is still unsafe from terrorist acts."

The Indonesian anti-terrorist unit, Detachment 88, was involved in a series of raids last year that authorities say netted the heads of JI and its military wing.

The police detained 10 suspected militants in Sumatra in July, as well as a large cache of bombs. Another five men suspected of planning to blow up an oil storage facility in the capital were detained in raids in Jakarta and Bogor, West Java, this week.

Indonesian police chief Bambang Hendarso Danuri told journalists separately on Friday that militant groups were now targeting government officials and vital infrastructure.

Police are still seeking Noordin Top, a Malaysian considered a key figure behind a series of bombings, including a second set of blasts in Bali in 2005 that killed more than 20 people. Some analysts say Top might have set up a splinter group.

Some other top JI figures are also believed to be in the southern Philippines, including Umar Patek and Dulmatin, suspects in the 2002 Bali bombs.

(Additional reporting by Heri Retnowati in Surabaya; Editing by Sara Webb and Alex Richardson)

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