Police continue hunt for Australian embassy bombers

8.40am

JAKARTA - Indonesian police have redoubled efforts to track militants blamed for a suicide car bomb attack on the Australian embassy, and released video recordings of the powerful blast.

The recordings, from two security cameras on opposite sides of the street from each other, showed a box-shaped van passing on its way to the embassy, on one of Jakarta's busiest roads, before blowing apart in a flash of smoke and debris, shaking trees and buildings. Then the images blurred.

In one scene a man who appears to be a security guard on the opposite side of the street, some 100m from the centre of the blast, doubles over as its full force hits him just before he is covered in a cloud of smoke and dust.

National police spokesman Inspector-General Paiman said earlier that police had stepped up efforts to track the militants behind the attack, which killed nine people and injured 182 in Jakarta on Thursday.

Leading news portal Kompas.com reported police had been combing densely populated central and east Java in the search for two Malaysians, Azahari Husin, who they said was a bomb-making expert and member of the al-Qaeda-linked Jemaah Islamiah, and Noordin Mohamed Top.

The website quoted unidentified police sources as saying several people in the area have been helping the two evade police.

"We can't tell the media where we're hunting them, but what we can say is we continue to step up the efforts ... it's still going on and will never stop until we nab them," Paiman said.

"We believe they are still in Indonesia, so they could be in any provinces."

Preventing future attacks could be hard, even though security at embassies and other potential targets was being stepped up, national police chief General Da'i Bachtiar told the news conference where the blast videos were released.

"This shows us all that even with our effort to beef up security in all the places that we suspected to be targeted ... it will be difficult to prevent."

He confirmed, without elaborating, that police had foiled a plot to attack an anti-terrorist centre when it opened in July in the Java city of Semarang. Indonesia President Megawati Sukarnoputri and Australia's justice minister attended.

Bachtiar said: "It is obvious that the target was the president as well as senior Indonesian police officials together with all their guests."

In Australia, the country's top policeman said on Saturday the militants had a second group poised for attack.

"There is intelligence suggesting that there is a second group active in the area," Australian Federal Police Commissioner Mick Keelty told Australian Broadcasting Corp.

Australia has never suffered a major terror attack on home soil but 88 Australians were among 202 people killed in nightclub bombings on the Indonesian island of Bali two years ago.

Bachtiar did not reply directly when asked about a second band of militants, but said Azahari's group "is still recruiting new members from East Java, Central Java, and West Java. That's how they are able to carry out these attacks."

A purported claim of responsibility for the Jakarta attack was made by Jemaah Islamiah in an internet statement that could not be authenticated, warning Australia of more attacks if it did not withdraw its 850 troops from in and around Iraq.

Prime Minister John Howard has vowed the troops will remain as long as they are needed to support the US-led Iraq war.

Australian Foreign Minister Alexander Downer has said Indonesian police were warned 45 minutes before the bombing that Western missions would be attacked if the accused spiritual leader of Jemaah Islamiah, Abu Bakar Bashir, was not freed.

Downer said the warning was conveyed in a phone text message.

Bashir, 66, is in detention awaiting formal charges over accusations of involvement in terror acts. He has denied any wrongdoing or ties to Jemaah Islamiah.

On Saturday a lawyer for Bashir quoted him as saying he had no connection to the embassy attack.

Bashir said "he did not know anything at all about the bomb. Secondly he condemns the bombing and expressed his condolences," lawyer Achmad Michdan told Reuters.

"Clearly he rejected any links" with the blast, Michdan said.

- REUTERS