– July 7, 2009: Suicide bombers walk into the lounges of the Ritz-Carlton and J.W. Marriott hotels in Jakarta and blow themselves up, killing seven people and wounding more than 50.
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In a late afternoon press conference, Jakarta Police chief Tito Karnavian confirmed that the attackers had links with Daesh.
Police spokesman Anton Charliyan said: “We have previously received a threat from Islamic State that Indonesia will be the spotlight”. It was unclear if any perpetrators remained at large.
“The state, the nation and the people should not be afraid of, and lose to, such terror acts”, he said.
Indonesia’s Co-ordinating Minister for Political, Legal and Security Affairs, Luhut Panjaitan told local media that “five terrorists were killed, we are not sure whether there are more people are out there, but the investigation is ongoing”.
One blast was in a Starbucks cafe and security forces were later seen entering the building, Reuters reported.
Clarke Jones, a counterterrorism expert at the Australian National University, said that the attack was of a “fairly amateurish type, with hand grenades and firearms”.
Previously, the spokesman said all the three policemen were killed.
The two others who died in the attack included a Dutch citizen and an Indonesian national, Iqbal said. “Kind of a denial or something”, he said in another tweet, referring to the pandemonium on the street below that took nearly three hours to bring under control.
Before the blasts occurred, Daesh had issued warning that there would be “a concert” – a term for terror acts – in Indonesia, he said.
At least three explosions rocked downtown Jakarta Thursday midmorning followed by more than two hours of gunbattles.
The federal government is investigating reports a Canadian may be among those killed in an attack in Indonesia’s capital which saw assailants set off explosions in a busy shopping area and wage gun battles with police.
According to the official Jakarta police Twitter account one explosion went off in front of a shopping centre called the Sarinah mall, on a main city avenue. The area is also home to luxury hotels and some embassies.
A United Nations regional representative, Jeremy Douglas, said that he was getting out of his auto by the United Nations office when a “massive bomb” detonated. “Didn’t experience this in 3.5 years in #Pakistan”, he wrote. “Chaos & we’re going into lock-down”, he wrote.
While suspicion is likely to fall on Islamic State or its allies, police said they did not know who was responsible and President Joko Widodo urged the public not to speculate on who was behind the attack. Indonesian police also arrested four suspected militants believed to have been involved in the gun and bomb assault in the centre of the capital.
So far there have been no claims of responsibility.
The report in Arabic said that a source told Aamaq that “fighters from the Islamic State carried out this morning an armed attack that targeted foreigners and the security forces tasked with protecting them in the Indonesian capital, Jakarta”.
In recent weeks, police have been on high alert, while military operations focus on hitting the East Indonesian Mujahadeen, helmed by Indonesia’s most wanted terrorist, Santoso, who has pledged support for ISIS.
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On Tuesday, a jailed radical Islamic cleric, Abu Bakar Bashir, appealed to an Indonesian court to overturn his conviction for funding a terror training site in Aceh province in the country’s northwest.
