Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz has strongly condemned the attack in Indonesia’s capital, Jakarta, and expressed grief and sorrow over the loss of lives.
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Malacañang called on Filipinos to exercise “heightened vigilance” following the attacks.
He said while Indonesia is generally a “very safe ” country, there is an ever-present background threat due to groups that are sympathetic to al Qaeda and ISIS.
Military spokesman Colonel Restituto Padilla told Agence France-Presse there had been no recent specific threats picked up by the authorities in the Philippines. He said that one Indonesian and one Dutch citizen had died, but the Dutch embassy said only that one of its nationals was wounded and being treated in hospital. According to one monitoring group, many of them have since returned.
Indonesia has been a victim of several bombing attacks in the past, claimed by militant groups.
A Reuters photographer said: “The Starbucks cafe windows are blown out”.
Police snipers were deployed among hundreds of other security officers, some in armoured vehicles.
Santoso also faces charges of running an extremist training camp in Poso, a flashpoint of terrorism in Central Sulawesi where a Muslim-Christian conflict killed at least 1,000 people from 1998 to 2002. She says people are being advised to remain indoors.
Charilyan said police had received information in late November about a warning from the Islamic State group that “there will be a concert” in Indonesia, meaning an attack.
A bomb disposal unit was seen entering the building where the Starbucks is located, which also houses a cinema where at one stage, police exchanged fire with gunmen.
In the hours since the attack, people in Jakarta have taken to Twitter to declare, “We Are Not Afraid”.
The attack sent widespread panic in the capital until midday after mounting social media messages said that a few other bomb blasts had also occurred in different locations in the capital after the Sarinah attack.
Police say the situation is now under control, with five suspected attackers among at least seven people killed. Today’s attacks would appear to be the most serious since then.
There have also been reports of blasts outside the city’s United Nations office and near the Turkish and Pakistani embassies.
A police officer gives a hand signal to a squad mate as they search a building near the site of an explosion in Jakarta, Indonesia Thursday, January 14, 2016.
Indonesian President Joko “Jokowi” Widodo, who is on a working visit in the West Java town of Cirebon, has ordered security forces to hunt down the perpetrators and their network behind the attacks in Jakarta.
According to witnesses, around six explosions were heard during the bomb attacks.
Indonesian authorities said that five attackers had been shot dead, though it was not immediately clear if others were involved.
Jakarta was last hit by a terror attack in 2009, when suicide bombers co-ordinated to strike the JW Marriott and Ritz Carlton Hotels, killing seven people, including three Australians and one New Zealander.
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Jakarta is the capital of Indonesia – a large nation of more than 250 million people and more than 14,000 individual islands in south-east Asia.
