posted on Aug, 5 2003 @ 04:03 PM
Details, details......
Indonesia Hotel Bomb Toll 14
06/08/2003 08:29 AM
A huge car bomb has ripped through one of the top hotels in Indonesia's capital, killing 14 people and wounding 150.
The Jakarta governor said a suicide bomber was probably responsible for the blast at the JW Marriott Hotel - the second major terror attack to shake
the world's most populous Muslim nation in a year.
The bomb ripped through the lobby and set fire to dozens of cars and taxis out front. Many windows in the 33-storey hotel were blown out.
"It was panic. Mad panic," said Stephen Mellor, a foreign resident who was parking his car less than 100 metres (yards) 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
in them to take to hospital."
The blast was timed as workers poured out of offices for lunch and mosques called the faithful to prayer, and came just two days before a court
delivers the first verdict in the trials of Muslim militants accused over last October's Bali bombings.
Diners were eating lunch in restaurants and cafes in the hotel and in a nearby office tower when the blast blew out windows and showered people with
shards of glass.
Wreckage from the charred lobby was strewn over a wide area.
Australian tourist Simon Leuning had just arrived in Jakarta and was relaxing in his hotel room when the explosion occurred.
Windows Blown In
"The window blew in, blew me across the room," he told Reuters Television. "I got out of there as fast as I could."
The Indonesian Red Cross said 14 people died and 150 were 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 senior Red Cross official said.
National Police Chief General Da'i Bachtiar said the car bomb blew up near the lobby, not the basement as earlier reports suggested. He said the
blast was similar to the Bali bombings.
Tuesday's attack coincided with high-profile trials of suspected Islamic militants on bomb-related charges - including that of Abu Bakar Bashir, an
influential cleric.
He is accused of leading the Southeast Asian Jemaah Islamiah militant Muslim network blamed for a series of attacks on Western targets, including
October's Bali bombings that killed 202 people, most of them foreign tourists partying in nightclubs.