BBC NEWS | Asia-Pacific | Fatal blasts hit Jakarta hotels

BBC NEWS | Asia-Pacific | Fatal blasts hit Jakarta hotels

At least six people including some foreigners have been killed in two separate blasts at luxury hotels in the Indonesian capital Jakarta, police say.

The country's Metro TV reported that one explosion hit the Ritz-Carlton and the other, the Marriott Hotel.

Television footage showed the facade of one of the hotels had been torn off by the blast.

The BBC's Karishma Vaswani, outside the Marriott, said ambulances are present and security is extremely tight.



Police say the blasts were probably bombs, but this has not yet been confirmed and the cause is not known.

The blasts occurred at about 0730 local time (0030 GMT).

"I heard two sounds like 'boom, boom' coming from the Marriott and the Ritz-Carlton. Then I saw people running out," security guard Eko Susanto told AFP.

Myra Junor, who witnessed the blasts from a nearby building, told Reuters windows on the lower floors of the Ritz-Carlton had shattered.

Ambulances are on the scene and there is a heavy police presence, says our correspondent.

An Australian man told local radio in Australia that his son had been hurt at the Marriott and was being taken to hospital.

The man, who identified himself only as Jim, said his son had telephoned him from Jakarta to say his leg was wounded and he had lost hearing in one ear in an explosion.

"He's on his way to hospital. He's OK," Jim said.

The two hotels are in Jakarta's central business district.

The explosions come two weeks after peaceful presidential elections in Indonesia.

Past tensions

The country of 240 million people has been praised in recent years for maintaining a pluralist democracy while finding and punishing radical Islamists responsible for a series of bombings five years ago.

Officials say they have no idea what caused the latest explosions.

Church bombings in 2000 killed 19 people.

Bomb attacks on two nightclubs in Bali in October 2002 killed 202 people, most of them Australian.

The Marriott Hotel was the target of a bomb attack in August 2003 in which 13 people were killed. A bomb outside the Australian embassy in Jakarta in 2004 killed nine people.

Since then, a combination of new laws, anti-terror training, international cooperation and reintegration measures have kept Indonesia peaceful, analysts have said.