Aussie embassy blast kills 11 in Jakarta

A powerful car bomb exploded outside the Australian embassy in Jakarta on Thursday, killing at least 11 people and wounding 173 in an attack...

A powerful car bomb exploded outside the Australian embassy in Jakarta on Thursday, killing at least 11 people and wounding 173 in an attack Indonesian police blamed on Islamic militants linked to Al Qaeda.

The bomb exploded ahead of a presidential election in Indonesia and a month before Australia’s general election. It blew a large hole in the embassy’s fence and left a deep crater in the road outside.

Charred debris, bodies and body parts, glass and the twisted wreckage of motorcycles, cars and a truck littered the road outside the embassy after the blast,

which tore off the glass fronts of nearby office towers, wounding many office workers. Australian PM John Howard expressed outrage. ‘‘This is not a nation that is going to be intimidated by acts of terrorism,’’ he said.

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His foreign minister, Alexander Downer, who was flying to Jakarta late on Thursday with a team of bomb experts, put the death toll at 11, all of them Indonesians.

Indonesian President Megawati Sukarnoputri vowed to track down those responsible, and broke off a trip to Brunei to fly back to Jakarta. Police said the attack bore all the hallmarks of Jemaah Islamiah, an Al Qaeda-linked militant network blamed for previous blasts in Indonesia such as the Bali bomb attacks in 2002 that killed 202 people, including 88 Australians.

Police Chief General Da’I Bachtiar specifically singled out Azahari Husin, a Malaysian bomb making expert inside Jemaah Islamiah, for blame. Azahari is believed to have been the key bombmaker in the Bali blasts and also a suicide bomb attack at Jakarta’s J.W. Marriott Hotel in August 2003 that killed 12 people. His whereabouts are unknown.

Australian embassy official Elizabeth O’Neill said she felt as if the wind had been sucked out of her lungs by the blast. ‘‘(It was an) enormous bomb. The enormity of the crater, the police truck outside has been blown to bits…,’’ she told Australia’s Nine Network. All Australian embassy staff were reported accounted for although some had minor injuries. Witnesses said that an Indonesian embassy guard had been killed.

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Suwardi, 39, said he was at a building just behind the embassy applying for a job. ‘‘I tried to run away after the bang, but the impact of the bomb was just so big. The perpetrators are not human. They’re animals, they’re devils. They must be fought,’’ he said.

Indonesian police have warned of threats related to the final round of the presidential election on September 20. Australia holds an election on October 9. The blast occurred just two days ahead of the anniversary of the attacks of September 11, 2001 on the WTC and Pentagon, in which about 3,000 people died. — (Reuters)