At least six people were killed after armed men carried out a series of apparently coordinated gun and bomb attacks in the heart of the Indonesian capital of Jakarta.
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At least seven people were killed and dozens injured when the militants attacked a police post near a shopping mall in an affluent area of the capital, and set off multiple blasts including a suicide bomb near a Starbucks cafe.
No one immediately claimed responsibility for the attack, though a news agency affiliated with the Islamic State group, quoted an unidentified source as saying the militant group was responsible.
Jakarta Police chief Tito Karnavian said Indonesian national Bahrun Naim, now thought to be in Syria, had been “planning this for a while”. Gen. Anton Charliyan, the spokesman of Indonesia’s national police.
“These acts of terror are not going to intimidate nation-states from protecting their citizens and continuing to provide real opportunity, education, jobs, possibilities of a future”, he said.
Two civilians were killed in the attack that began Thursday morning, an Indonesian and a Canadian. The cafe is close to some United Nations offices and a shopping center on Thamrin Street, a major thoroughfare home to many luxury hotels, high-rise office buildings, and embassies.
At the same time, two militants attacked a police traffic post nearby, using what he described as hand grenade-like bombs.
Bower says Indonesia’s condemnation of those attacks makes it less likely ISIS will find sympathizers in the country.
“From what we see today, this group is following the pattern of the Paris attacks”.
‘It confirms the threat that ISIS poses to Indonesia, ‘ Associate Professor Fealy said.
Chief security minister Luhut Pandjaitan said it was “too early” to talk about IS involvement.
Office workers and unarmed police officers flee from the scene after a gun-battle broke out at the scene of an attack in Jakarta, Indonesia, Jan. 14, 2016.more +.
The 20 injured have been rushed into several hospitals in the city, he said. Twenty people were wounded, including five police officers.
Two Western hotels in Jakarta were bombed in 2009, and more than 200 people were killed in 2002 at a nightclub on the tourist island of Bali.
On Tuesday, jailed radical Islamic cleric Abu Bakar Bashir appealed to an Indonesia court to have his conviction for funding a terror training camp overturned, arguing that his support for the camp was an act of worship. A higher court later reduced the sentence to nine years.
Indonesia has suffered a spate of deadly attacks by the Jemaah Islamiyah network in the past.
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It would not be the first Islamist strike on the country; past terrorist attacks by militants have left hundreds of people dead.
