JAKARTA // Three people were killed in Jakarta yesterday when attackers set off several explosions at a Starbucks cafe in a busy shopping area and waging gun battles with police.
There were unconfirmed media reports of explosions in other parts of Jakarta.
Four suspects believed to have been involved in the gun-and-bomb assault in the centre of the capital were arrested, police said.
They said four other attackers and three civilians were killed in the attacks, which came after several warnings in recent weeks by the police that militants were planning violence.
There was no claim of responsibility but ISIL issued a cryptic warning before yesterday’s attacks, according to national police spokesman Anton Charliyan.
“The warning said there will be a concert in Indonesia and it will be international news,” he said.
It was the first major violence in Indonesia’s capital since the 2009 bombings of two hotels in which seven people were killed and 50 injured. Before that, a bombing in a nightclub on the resort island of Bali in 2002 killed 202 people, most of them foreigners.
The attacks took place in front of the Sarinah shopping mall on Thamrin Street and prompted a security lockdown in central Jakarta and security checks all over the city of 10 million.
“This act is clearly aimed at disturbing public order and spreading terror among people,” president Joko Widodo, said on television. Mr Widodo, who is on a working visit in West Java town of Cirebon, was planning to return to Jakarta.
“The state, the nation and the people should not be afraid of, and lose to, such terror acts,” he said.
Tri Seranto, a bank security guard, said he saw five attackers, including three who triggered explosions at the coffee shop.
Mr Tri described them as suicide bombers, but Gen Anton Charilyan, a spokesman for the national police, denied they blew themselves up.
He said the attack involved an unknown number of assailants with grenades and guns, at least one on a motorcycle. He said three civilians were killed. Later, Jakarta police spokesman Col Muhammad Iqbal said four of the attackers were killed, and their bodies retrieved.
Mr Tri said he was out on the street when he saw the three men entering Starbucks. He said the other two attackers, carrying handguns, entered a police post from where he heard gunfire.
TVOne, a television network, reported three explosions in other parts of the city.
After the first explosions a gun battle broke out between the attackers and police, which lasted an hour.
Two hours later, an explosion was heard from a cafe near the Starbucks, about five minutes after 25 policemen entered it.
The area has many luxury hotels, and offices and embassies.
The set of explosions were in neighbourhoods where the embassies of Turkey and Pakistan are located.
Tweets from the account of Jeremy Douglas, regional representative of the United Nations office on drugs and crime for South-East Asia and the Pacific, described a bomb and “serious” exchanges of gunfire on the street outside his Jakarta office.
“Didn’t experience this in 3.5 years in #Pakistan,” he wrote.
“A massive #bomb went off in front of our new #Indonesia office as @collie – brown & I exit car. Chaos & we’re going into lockdown,” he wrote. And three minutes later: “Apparent #suicidebomber literally 100m from the office and my hotel. Now gunfire.”
Indonesia, the world’s most populous Muslim nation, has suffered several bombing attacks, claimed by radicalised militant groups.
Last month, police arrested nine men and said the group had wanted to “perform a ‘concert’ to attract international news coverage of their existence here”. Police cited a document seized from the group that described the planned attacks as a “concert”.
The country has been on high alert after authorities said they had foiled a plot by militants to attack government officials, foreigners and others. About 150,000 police officers and soldiers were deployed during New Year’s Eve to guard churches, airports and other public places.
More than 9,000 police were also deployed in Bali.
On Tuesday, the jailed radical imam Abu Bakar Bashir appealed to an Indonesia court to have his conviction for funding a terrorist training camp overturned. He argued that his support for the camp was an act of worship.
The 77-year-old leader of the Jemaah Islamiyah militant network filed a judicial review of his 2011 conviction, when he was sentenced to 15 years in jail for setting up the camp in Aceh province. A higher court later cut the sentence to nine years.
Indonesia has suffered a spate of deadly attacks by the Jemaah Islamiyah network. But strikes in recent years have been smaller and less deadly, and have targeted government authorities, mainly police and antiterrorism forces.
* Associated Press, additional reporting from Reuters
