What happened at the Ritz Carlton Hotel in Jakarta?
Bombs tore through the Ritz Carlton and JW Marriott hotels in Jakarta, killing eight people and injuring at least 51 others in Indonesia’s first terrorist attack in almost four years. Two blasts at about 7:45 a.m. local time rocked the hotels in an up-market shopping and business district, killing eight people, ripping the façade off the Ritz, blowing out windows and showering the street with glass and debris. The dead included the New Zealand-born president of cement maker PT Holcim Indonesia. The attacks come nine days after elections in Indonesia, the world’s most populous Muslim country, in which President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono won a second five-year term after improving security and pledging to reduce corruption and boost economic growth. The bombings bear the hallmark of Southeast Asian militant group Jemaah Islamiyah, terrorism analyst Rohan Gunaratna said. “The intelligence and security services have been caught by surprise,” he said. “The bombings show that JI is revived.”
