for the first time, australia is a direct target
By Alan Sipress and Ellen Nakashima ~ Washington Post ~ Thursday, September 9, 2004; 2:47 AM JAKARTA, Indonesia, Sept. 9 -- A large explosion was set off early Thursday outside the Australian Embassy in Jakarta's financial district, killing at least four people and wounding more than 100, officials said. Police said the blast appeared to have been caused by a car bomb.
The explosion at about 10:30 a.m. mangled the high metal gate in front of the Australian Embassy and shattered the windows of office towers along the adjacent boulevard. Scores of police rushed to the scene and police helicopters circled overhead. Windows of several cars and buses were blown out by the force of the explosion. A nearby police truck was destroyed.
A witness said he saw a motorcycle rider killed in the explosion, his body dismembered. At least one of the dead appeared to be an Indonesian security guard working at the embassy. John Kalangi, 45, a businessman from eastern Indonesia, said he was inside the Australian Embassy applying for a visa when the blast occurred.
"I just heard a blast, a bang," he said. "It happened very fast and we just covered our heads." Nearby buildings were evacuated and police set up a security perimeter about a mile away from the embassy as smoke from the explosion billowed.
No Australian Embassy workers were seriously hurt in Thursday's explosion, Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Lyndall Sachs said from the Australian capital, Canberra, according to the Associated Press. She said that windows of the building were shattered and that power was down.
Harold Crouch, a professor at the Australian National University who was inside the embassy at the time of the blast, said part of the ceiling toward the front of the embassy had collapsed and doors had been blown out. "The entrance to the building was completely wrecked," he said.
The embassy is set back from the street out front, Rasuna Said Boulevard. The offices of the senior Australian officials are not located at the front of the building, Crouch said.
Indonesia has been targeted in several attacks in the recent past. The district where the blast went off Thursday was the site of an August 2003 suicide bombing near the JW Marriott Hotel, where 12 people were killed. In 2002, two nightclubs were bombed in Bali, killing 202 people, including 88 Australian citizens.
Indonesian authorities have blamed those attacks on members of Jemaah Islamiah, a militant Islamic group linked by intelligence officials to al Qaeda. U.S. Ambassador Ralph L. Boyce said he had been told that Indonesian authorities were operating under the assumption that Jemaah Islamiah was responsible for Thursday's attack as well.
"We have been concerned about a possible attack," Boyce said Thursday. On Tuesday, the State Department in Washington updated a travel warning for Indonesia. The warning advised U.S. citizens about "security concerns regarding identifiably western hotels" and recommended that Americans "defer all non-essential travel to Indonesia."
The warning also urged U.S. citizens in Indonesia "to remain aware of the continued potential for terrorist attacks against Americans, U.S.- or other Western interests in Indonesia."
The State Department updated its warning in advance of possible "election-related violence." Thursday's blast came 11 days before President Megawati Sukarnoputri and her former chief security minister, Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, face-off in a run-off election here.Original article:
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