Suicide bomber in minivan carried out Jakarta attack: police

5.00pm

UPDATE - JAKARTA - A suicide bomber in a Daihatsu minivan packed with explosives was responsible for an attack at the Australian embassy in Jakarta on Thursday that killed nine people, Indonesian police said today.

"According to witnesses, the bomb was in a car that we have identified as a green Daihatsu Zebra. It exploded right away so we have assumed the perpetrator was still in the car," Suyitno Landung, head of the police criminal investigation department, told El Shinta radio station.

Police and forensics experts searched through the night for evidence at the site of Thursday's blast which police have already blamed on Islamic militants linked to Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda.

The blast, two days before the third anniversary of the September 11 attacks on the United States, could unnerve Indonesia's financial markets ahead of a final round of a presidential election on September 20, although after an initial sharp dip on Thursday, the markets recovered much of their ground.

The blast came a month before an Australian general election.

Australian Foreign Minister Alexander Downer flew to Jakarta late on Thursday with a team of forensics experts, who immediately went to help police scour the scene. Downer is expected to visit the site on Friday morning.

"This was a cruel and a callous attack ... Our officials will do everything they can to help the Indonesians hunt down the people responsible for this brutality," Downer told reporters.

Indonesian police suspect the Jemaah Islamiah network, seen as al Qaeda's South-East Asian arm and blamed for October 2002 bomb attacks on Bali island, was behind the embassy strike.

Jemaah Islamiah was also believed to be responsible for a suicide blast at Jakarta's JW Marriott Hotel in August last year that killed 12 people.

The group wants to set up an Islamic state across Southeast Asia. It purportedly claimed responsibility for the Thursday attack in an internet statement, that could not immediately be verified, and warned of more unless Australia withdrew forces from Iraq.

Health officials said nine Indonesians were killed and 182 people, most of them Indonesians, were wounded on Thursday. Australian officials put the death toll as high as 11, all Indonesians. Some Australian embassy staff were slightly hurt.

Among the injured, five-year-old Australian Elizabeth Manuela Musu, whose mother was killed in the blast, had just become an Australian citizen and was about to get her passport.

As dawn broke, the mangled wrecks of two vehicles and a motorcycle remained in front of the embassy, where the bomb had punched through the gate and wall. Nearly a dozen wreaths had been placed outside.

Shattered glass and other debris still littered the street in front of the embassy. Part of the street, one of Jakarta's busiest, was blocked off, adding to the normal jams in the sprawling city of 10 million.

On the other side of the road, traffic backed up as drivers slowed to gape at the scene.

Two buildings near the embassy were wrapped in blue plastic to prevent glass from broken windows falling on pedestrians. The blast shattered windows of offices in several nearby buildings, including the Greek and Russian embassies.

Security had already been tightened in Jakarta in the wake of a spate of bomb attacks in recent years, especially the Bali blasts that killed 202 people, 88 of them Australian.

Indonesian and Australian police have pointed the finger at Azahari Husin, a Malaysian bomb-making expert and member of Jemaah Islamiah. Another fugitive militant suspect is Noordin Mohammed Top, also a Malaysian.

"Whilst Azahari and Noordin Top remain at large, they remain the top priority for all the work that is being done here in the region," Australian Federal Police Commissioner Mick Keelty, who accompanied Downer, told a news conference late on Thursday. Azahari is believed to have made the bomb used in the Marriott and Bali blasts.

Police said it was too early to say if a suicide bomber carried out the embassy attack.

Indonesian police had warned of threats in the run-up to the presidential election on Sept. 20.

Downer said he had no information the embassy attack was linked to either the Indonesian or Australian elections.

Australian Prime Minister John Howard says Australia's 850 troops in and around Iraq will stay until the job is done. Opposition leader Mark Latham wants to bring troops home by Christmas. They are in a tight election race.

Expressions of sympathy came from across the world. UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan said he was horrified and repeated his condemnations of terrorist acts.

"He extends his heartfelt condolences to the government of Indonesia and the families of the victims of this apparent terrorist act," Annan's spokesman said.

- REUTERS