Nine dead in Indonesian hotel blasts: police AFP -
Friday, July 17
JAKARTA (AFP) - - At least nine people have been killed and 41
have been injured, many of them foreigners, after bombs exploded in
two luxury hotels in central Jakarta, police have said.
Police and officials on Friday said "high explosive bombs"
caused the two blasts in the Indonesian capital which targeted the
Ritz-Carlton hotel and the nearby JW Marriott in the upscale Mega
Kuningan business district in the centre of the city around 8:00am
(0100 GMT).
"I heard two sounds like 'boom, boom' coming from the Marriott
and the Ritz-Carlton. Then I saw people running out," security
guard Eko Susanto told AFP.
Blood was spattered on the street outside the Marriott and
police had sealed off the area, an AFP correspondent said. A large
plume of smoke could be seen rising above the business district of
the Indonesian capital.
Windows had been blown out of a second-storey restaurant at the
Ritz-Carlton, but there was little damage to the Marriott that was
visible from outside.
"There were two explosions, one in the Marriott and one in the
Ritz-Carlton," a police spokesman said.
Another witness told AFP he saw several foreigners covered in
blood in the immediate aftermath of the explosion at the
Marriott.
Pakaya said a New Zealander was among the wounded, while
officials in Seoul said a South Korean man in his 50s was also
injured. An Australian was reported to have suffered leg
injuries.
Police said it was too early to say whether the explosions were
the result of a militant attack like those that killed 12 people at
the Jakarta Marriott in 2003 and more than 200 in Bali in 2002.
President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, who was re-elected to a
second term in the mainly Muslim country last week, was "deeply
concerned over this incident," a spokesman for his office said.
The Islamic militant network Jemaah Islamiyah (JI) has been
blamed for a string of bombings on local and Western targets in
Indonesia and other parts of Southeast Asia in recent years.
As well as the 2002 Bali bombings and 2003 Marriott attack, JI
was also blamed for a suicide attack on the Australian embassy in
Jakarta in 2004 which left 10 dead and a second attack in Bali in
2005 which killed 20.
JI has been linked by Western governments to the Al-Qaeda
network and key JI leader Hambali, who was arrested in Thailand in
2003, was handed over to US custody and is being detained at US
prison at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba.
The Indonesian authorities arrested many of the top leadership
of JI in the aftermath of the Bali bombings and analysts believed
the organisation had been severely weakened.
However several key members remained at large including top
bombmaker Noordin Mohammed Top, a Malaysian.
Three members of JI were executed in November last year for
their role in the 2002 bombings in Bali, and analysts warned at the
time there could be reprisal attacks.
