Jakarta – The death of Malaysian terror mastermind Noordin Mohammed Top would be a huge blow to his network but would not mean the end of Islamist suicide bombings in Indonesia, analysts and officials said.

Senior anti-terror official Ansyaad Mbai said even without Noordin, his cells may continue to kill innocent people in the name of defending Muslims everywhere – from Iraq to the Philippines – from perceived oppression.

"It would therefore not be correct to assume that with his death, his entire terror network has been paralysed," he told state-run news agency Antara.

Noordin was reported killed in a violent raid on his hideout in Central Java by US-trained counter-terrorist forces on Saturday, possibly bringing the biggest criminal manhunt in Indonesian history to a bloody conclusion.

But security and terrorism analysts agreed that his death, if confirmed by DNA analysis in the coming days and weeks, would not cripple the network of cells he has worked hard to recruit, finance and train since 2002.

"The people who idolise Noordin as a mujahid (holy warrior) are still out there," Indonesian expert Noor Huda Ismail, of the Institute for International Peacebuilding, told AFP. "They have their own ideology about becoming martyrs and reaching heaven. The path for that dream will always emerge."

Noordin, a 40-year-old former accountant, has terrorised the world's most populous Muslim-majority country, and the Western tourists and business people who visit it, with a series of suicide bombings dating back to 2003. His latest suspected attack came on July 17, when two suicide bombers pierced the airport-style security of the JW Marriott and Ritz-Carlton hotels in Jakarta and blew themselves up, killing seven people, mainly Westerners.

But it was the wholesale slaughter of the Jemaah Islamiyah (JI) network's 2002 blasts in Bali, which killed 202 people including 88 Australians, that set Noordin on the road to becoming one of the region's most feared extremists.

Regional security analyst Sidney Jones, of the International Crisis Group, said Noordin was not directly involved in the Bali bombing but tried to emulate its impact in subsequent attacks on "iconic" Western targets.

The first venture for his JI splinter group – which he ambitiously dubbed "Al-Qaeda for the Malay Archipelago" – was the 2003 suicide truck bombing of the JW Marriott hotel in Jakarta which killed 12 people and injured 150. Backed by expert bomb-maker and operational planner Azhari Husin, another Malaysian, the Noordin group's next major job was the 2004 suicide truck bombing at the Australian embassy in Jakarta, which killed 10 people.

A year later his network, also dubbed the "Dare-to-Die Brigade", returned to Bali and launched three suicide bombers into crowded tourist restaurants, killing 20. Police finally caught up with Azhari, killing him in a volley of gunfire later in 2005 on Java island after a prolonged standoff – much as Noordin reportedly died on Saturday, three days before his 41st birthday.

Analysts said Azhari's death helped to silence Noordin for a while, along with improved police work and the arrests of hundreds of Islamic extremists and senior JI leaders between 2005 and 2007.

But with protection from sympathetic relatives and Islamists, some of whom did not agree with his violence but would not turn him over to the police, he was able to rebuild.