Terrorists laid siege to the heart of Indonesia’s capital on Thursday with a four-hour gun and bomb assault that left seven people dead and 10 others wounded, officials said.
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Christian Hubel/AP At least six explosions were heard in the Indonesian capital on Thursday, and a local television station reported that up to 14 gunmen were involved in the attacks.
Citing unidentified police sources, Reuters and Metro TV News, a news outlet in Indonesia, reported a Canadian man had been killed in the attacks, which have been linked to the Islamic State group.
After downtown Jakarta was shutdown for five hours, police secured the shopping centre, which stands close to the presidential palace, the U.S embassy and the United Nations building.
Moments later, a group of policemen was attacked by two remaining gunmen, using homemade bombs, said Jakarta police chief Maj.-Gen.
National police spokesman Anton Charliyan said while it was not yet clear who carried out the attack, IS had warned of a “concert in Indonesia” which would be global news.
ABC Indonesia correspondent Adam Harvey says police say attackers came in on motorcycles throwing grenades. He said they imitated the recent “terror acts” in Paris and were likely from the Islamic State group, but gave no evidence.
Footage showed two suicide bombers blow themselves up outside the cafe, and a militant was also believed to have been captured on film in a gun battle with police.
Jokowi says: “The state, nation and people should not be afraid of, and lose to, such terror acts”.
“So far, one Dutch man has been seriously injured”, the Dutch foreign ministry said in a statement issued in The Hague. “I pray for speedy recovery of the injured”, he said.
Five of them were the attackers themselves.
“It’s concerning (to have) yet one more day and another attack in another part of the world”, Sajjan Gohel of the Asia-Pacific Foundation told CNN.
“This is a very popular shopping area with restaurants and office buildings”, said Frans Demon, a VOA Indonesian Service reporter in Jakarta.
“While the police and army have been focused on going after Indonesia’s most wanted terrorist, Santoso, in the hills of Central Sulawesi, ISIS has succeeded in building a network of supporters in the suburbs of Jakarta”, Jones wrote.
A tweet purportedly sent out by the Amaq news agency of so-called Islamic State claimed that “soldiers of the Caliphate carried out an armed attack in Jakarta against foreigners and the security forces that were supposed to protect them”. Police then exchanged fire with the militants, which resulted in the deaths of two of the militants.
More than 9,000 police were also deployed in Bali.
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Indonesia, which boasts a population of more than 150 million Muslims, has experienced terror attacks from radical jihadists before.
