WITNESS ACCOUNTS
Witnesses describe Jakarta carnage
JAKARTA: Jeremy Douglas hadn’t seen anything like what he was witnessing from his office window at the United Nations building in central Jakarta: police exchanging gunfire with militants amid a series of blasts at a key intersection of Indonesia’s capital.
“Serious exchange of fire in downtown #Jakarta. Didn’t experience this in 3.5 years in #Pakistan,” Mr Douglas, the regional representative of the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, wrote in a series of tweets yesterday.
“Amazing how some folks are walking and some running. Kind of a denial or something,” he said in another tweet, referring to the pandemonium on the street below.
He had just gotten out of his car to enter the UN building with a colleague “when a massive #bomb went off”, he tweeted. “Chaos and we’re going into lockdown.”
Indonesia has seen attacks by Islamist militants before, but a coordinated assault by a team of suicide bombers and gunmen is unprecedented and has echoes of the sieges witnessed in Mumbai seven years ago and more recently in Paris in November.
The attack began with a blast just outside a Starbucks cafe near a traffic intersection.
Photographer Darren Whiteside, who was near the Starbucks when the blast went off, said debris was strewn about the street 30-40m in front of the cafe and he saw a police officer’s body being dragged away.
Police responded in force within minutes, Mr Whiteside said. Black armoured cars screeched to a halt in front of the Starbucks and sniper teams were deployed near Sarinah mall across the street from the UN building.
Helicopters flew overhead, as police worked to hold back a huge crowd around the scene, he said.
Dozens of military troops were also deployed.
Eliaz Warre said he was riding on a motorbike when an explosion went off at a police post. “I saw people running away and two people lying on the ground bleeding,” he said.
MY Farooqui, general manager with Dubai-based firm OHME, was having breakfast at the Sari Pan Pacific Hotel next to Sarinah when he heard a blast. “Hotel is locked up from all sides and no one is allowed to go out or in. May God bless us,” he wrote in a Facebook message.
The injured were taken to nearby Gatot Subroto hospital. A woman, who hospital staff said was related to a dead police officer, came in crying, accompanied by a small child.
Arriving at the scene, Indonesia’s Chief Security Minister Luhut Pandjaitan said such events were no surprise. “Similar events have happened in Paris, Mumbai, New York; they can happen here too.” he said.