A Paris-style suicide attack with a gun and a series of explosions, allegedly perpetrated by Dae’sh-affiliated militants on Indonesia’s capital on Thursday morning, left seven people including the five attackers dead.
The three-hour-long siege, marking the first assault on the Muslim-majority country by the radical group, took place near a Starbucks cafe and Sarinah’s, a popular department store in Jakarta. Seventeen people, including a Dutch man, were wounded in the attack.
Quoting Jakarta police spokesperson Senior Commissioner Muhammad Iqbal, the Jakarta Globe reported that seven people were killed in the attacks. AFP and Reuters reported that one of the causalities was a policeman, which contradicts Iqbal’s statement.
“Five are the perpetrators and two civilians. There were no police officers killed in the incident,” he said.
Iqbal did say that the Dutch national was among the civilians killed, but later it was confirmed that he was injured and being treated in hospital.
“Islamic State (Dae’sh) fighters carried out an armed attack this morning targeting foreign nationals and the security forces charged with protecting them in the Indonesian capital,” Aamaaq news agency, which is allied to the jihadist group, said on its Telegram channel.
However, in a Twitter post later, SITE Intelligence Group, a monitor which keeps records of Dae’sh atrocities around the globe, said they were yet to confirm the claim.
Earlier in the day, Indonesian police in a Facebook post said there were a total of seven perpetrators, three of whom had been shot dead and four “incapacitated and arrested.” They said reports that the assailants were heavily armed and riding motorcycles were not true.
Aries Muander, a journalist with popular Indonesian financial news outlet kompas.com, shared his experience of witnessing the event near Sarinah’s with the Dhaka Tribune.
“When my bike reached half-a-block away from the intersection nearby Sarinah’s, I heard back-to-back explosions and saw people running past me. I immediately slid into a nearby alley and started asking others what had been going on. Everyone there was confused and visibly scared. Couple of minutes after that I heard three more explosions and saw smoke billowing from the intersection. At that time, a column of APCs [armoured personnel carriers] went right past me, and I started to punch digits on my phone immediately after that to call my wife, worrying something really bad had happened,” he told Dhaka Tribune via Whatsapp.
According to the Jakarta Post, the first explosion was reported at 10:50am in the parking lot of the Starbucks outlet at Jalan Thamrin, Jakarta’s main street packed with government agency buildings and embassies, and was followed by six more blasts over the next 10 minutes, including at a police check post.
Surveillance footage obtained by BeritaSatu TV indicates that two of the suspects blew themselves up as they detonated the first bomb in the parking lot. Smoke was seen in the footage following a huge explosion after one of the men was seen pulling a bomb from his backpack.
Speculation has been spreading on social media that the attack might have been a retaliation against a presidential decree, issued on Wednesday, which allowed the Indonesian law enforcement agencies to step up investigation into a little-known Dae’sh affiliated group called Gafatar, Mustaqim Adamrah, a correspondent with the Cogencis news agency’s Jakarta office, told the Dhaka Tribune via Whatsapp.
The last major militant attacks in Jakarta were in July 2009, with bombs at the JW Marriott and Ritz Carlton hotels.