JI Strikes Thrice in Jakarta – Many Killed

Jakarta, 0755 WIB local time, 2 explosion taken place in 2 luxury hotels in Jakarta, the JW Marriott and Ritz Carlton Mega Kuningan. The hotels are 50 meters apart. Suspected bom attact.

(see comments below for more updates)

Here are some of the pictures taken at the scene:

Another 2 explosions occurred in the motor way at Muara Angke Jakarta, a pickup exploded into flames is confirmed not associated with the explosions of the 2 luxury hotels.

CCN JAKARTA, Indonesia reports — The death toll from bombings at two luxury hotels Friday morning in south Jakarta, Indonesia, has risen to eight, a presidential spokesman said. The number of wounded people was in the 40s, the spokesman said.

Counter-terrorist police commandos secure the damaged Ritz-Carlton hotel in Jakarta on Friday after the blasts.

Antara News, a state-run agency, quoted a witness as saying he saw four foreigners among the wounded.

The Ritz-Carlton Hotel was to have accommodated soccer players from Manchester United of Britain, who are expected to arrive Saturday in Jakarta on Saturday.

The victims were taken to nearby MMC Hospital and Jakarta Hospital, the agency reported.

The Marriott Hotel in Jakarta was the site of a terrorist attack in August 2003 that killed 12 people

JAKARTA, Indonesia (TIME) – Immediate speculation about the perpetrators pointed to suicide bombers in the main restaurants, which are either on the lobby or on the second floor at both of the five-star hotels. Indonesia’s Metro TV quoted Nuruddin, an employee at the Marriott, saying that a body with no head or feet had been found. The news station reported that another headless body was found in the Ritz-Carlton, also an American hotel chain with the same Indonesian owner.

“The bombs could have been on timers or strapped to suicide bombers,” suggests Ken Conboy, a security consultant in Jakarta and author of The Second Front, a look inside Jemaah Islamiah (JI), a homegrown, regional terrorist network with ties to al-Qaeda. “If they were suicide bombers it was most likely the work of religious radicals or Jemaah Islamiah. It depends on the devices used, but if they got to the second floors of both hotels [the hotel] security really screwed up.”

Indonesia’s deadliest bombings took place in 2002 in Bali when 202 people died (the single largest group of victims being Australians); JI claimed responsibility. Then came the first Marriott attack, followed by an explosion at the Australian embassy in Jakarta. The last terrorist attack in Indonesia was in October 2005 when 20 people were killed by suicide bombers, also in Bali.  

(TIME) – Three men involved in the 2002 bombing of two nightclubs in Bali were executed on Nov. 9 on the Indonesian prison island of Nusakambangan off the coast of Java.

Amrozi bin Hasyim, his older brother, Mukhlas, and accomplice Imam Samudra were executed by firing squad five years after being convicted for the terrorist attacks that killed 202 people, many of them tourists, on the resort island. The three Indonesians, shot just after midnight, were the first to be put to death under the country’s tough anti-terrorism law, after numerous appeals for leniency were rejected by the government.

In the months before the execution, which had originally been planned for September, radical groups called for revenge attacks, while the American and Australian embassies in Indonesia received bomb threats. Malls and hotels stepped up security in response to the constant local and international media coverage of the impending executions. But some experts say violence is not likely to spread.

“We could see some kind of backlash in their hometowns in Java but I don’t think there will be on a larger scale as people have seen the suffering and the majority of Muslims disagree with what they did,” says Masdar Hilmy, a professor at the State Islamic University of Islam in Surabaya and an expert on radical Islam. “Mass organizations like the Nahdlatul Ulama and Muhammadiyah have also called on their followers to not be influenced by radical propaganda.”