Jakarta suffers another bombing

Second bombing in three days rips through fast-food restaurant and injures 11 people, one seriously

A bomb blast ripped through a Kentucky Fried Chicken restaurant at Jakarta’s Sukarno-Hatta airport Sunday, injuring 11 people, one of them seriously, police said.

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Police bring in sniffer dogs to
find pieces of the bomb,
helping investigators to
identify suspects

The explosion comes four days after police announced they had arrested 18 suspected members of the Jemaah Islamiyah network and seized guns and explosives.

One local television report put the number of injured at 11, including a 12 year-old girl, while a health official at the airport and police said at least seven were injured, one seriously with the loss of a leg.

Chief Detective Erwin Mappaseng said the blast was “clearly caused by a home-made bomb, of a low explosive type”.

National Police Chief General Dai Bachtiar told journalists at the airport after visiting the site of the blast that an iron pipe bomb had been detonated by a motorcycle battery, declining to comment further, saying an investigation was ongoing.

The explosion took place around 23:30 GMT Saturday at the F2 terminal that is mostly used for international flights, according to Jakarta police spokesman Prasetyo.

Bachtiar and Prasetyo said the explosion took place in the public side of the airport, in front of the entrance to the restricted area where airline check-in counters are located.

This attack is the second in the Indonesian capital in three days.  “From the components of the bomb that have been found, we can physically find some similarities … the aims of the perpetrators are clearly to terrorise people, to scare them,” Mappaseng told the Elshinta private radio.

The bombing may be linked to pending trials of terrorism suspects, said top security minister Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono.

“There may be some correlation with the ongoing trial of a number of figures suspected of involvement in terrorism … We cannot afford to relax our alertness … do not only rely on the police — there should be a national movement to continue preventing these acts of terrorism,” he said.

Passengers at the airport reported a strong smell of sulphur following the blast, which shattered glass panels in the area. Television pictures showed the blast had upturned furniture inside the restaurant and a large pool of blood was visible on the floor.

Dede, a food service worker in the airport, said by telephone that there was a brief power outage, “then I heard a loud explosion.”

One of the witnesses, Jihan, 32, who was slightly injured in the blast and was being treated at a nearby hospital, said that he believed the blast came from a handbag put under one of the seats.

Airport administrator Andreas Moersantoso said security would be tightened. “We applied standard security measures but this happened in a public area where everyone has access,” he said.
 
The airport remains open, and no flights have been cancelled. Prasetyo said police would step up security at the airport “including additional surveillance at entry gates,” but did not elaborate.