INDONESIA: A huge car-bomb ripped through one of the top hotels in Indonesia's capital yesterday, killing 14 people and wounding about 150.
The city's governor said that a suicide-bomber was probably responsible for the attack on the Marriott Hotel - the second major explosion to hit Indonesia in less than a year.
The bomb was timed to go off as thousands of workers poured out of offices for lunch and mosques called the faithful to prayer.
The explosion ripped through the lobby of the hotel and set fire to cars and taxis parked outside. Many windows in the 33-storey building were blown out. Wreckage from the lobby was strewn over a wide area.
Diners were eating lunch in restaurants and cafés in the hotel and in a nearby office tower when the blast blew out windows and showered people with shards of glass.
Australian tourist Simon Leuning had just arrived in Jakarta from Perth and was relaxing in his room at the hotel when the explosion occurred. "The window blew in, blew me across the room," he said. "I got out of there as fast as I could."
The Indonesian Red Cross said that 14 people had died and 150 had been wounded.
"Thirteen bodies have been evacuated to hospitals while the last one, a human head without body, was just found by a Red Cross team on the fifth floor of the hotel," a Red Cross official said.
The attack coincided with high-profile trials of suspected Islamic militants on bomb-related charges - including that of Abu Bakar Bashir, an influential cleric in the world's most populous Muslim country. He is accused of leading the Jemaah Islamiah network, which has been blamed for a series of attacks on Western targets, including October's Bali bombings, which killed 202 people, most of them foreign tourists.
Police in Jakarta said that a Dutch banking executive was among the dead, while two Americans, two Singaporeans, an Australian and a New Zealander were among those wounded. The official Antara news agency said that 111 people had been injured, many of them seriously.
The Marriott, which is popular with foreign businessmen, is in the wealthy suburb of Kuningan near the city's business district. It is close to the diplomatic area of Menteng, where many Western embassies and consulates are based.
Management said that the hotel was 70-80 per cent full at the time of the blast. "It was panic, mad panic," said Stephen Mellor, a foreign resident who was parking his car less than 100 metres from the hotel at the time of the blast. "The police and paramedics did what they could, but they seemed overwhelmed. People were almost hijacking cars in desperation and piling the injured into them to take them to hospital."
Washington said last week that Osama bin Laden's al-Qaeda network was planning new suicide hijackings and bombings in the United States and abroad. The US embassy in Jakarta held its Fourth of July independence celebrations at the hotel.
The explosion hit Indonesia's financial markets. The main stock index ended down 3 per cent, its lowest level in more than two months.
The Marriott, which opened in September 2001 and has 33 floors and 333 rooms, is the newest luxury hotel in the bustling city, which is home to over 10 million people.