Death toll rises to 11 in Jakarta blast
The death toll from a hotel bombing in Indonesia rose to 11 today with the death of a taxi driver injured in the blast.
Meanwhile, police said the suspected suicide bomber had stashed 110lb of explosives at his home before the attack in Jakarta.
The driver had been waiting outside the hotel when the bomb went off on Tuesday, said Adi, a spokesman at Jakarta’s Cipto Mangunkusumo hospital.
Police said today that Asmar Latin Sani – the alleged bomber whose severed head was found in the wreckage at the Marriott Hotel – had kept a cache of explosives at his house in the town of Bengkulu, about 155 miles from Jakarta.
It was not clear whether they were used in the blast, said police spokesman Zainuri Lubis.
He said the two men arrested last week on suspicion of involvement in the attack had told police about the explosives.
Investigators have uncovered the charred remains of a battery used in the bomb, Lubis said, adding that the battery was similar to those used in a series of church bombings across Indonesia in 2000.
Indonesian authorities believe that the al Qaida-linked South-east Asian terror group Jemaah Islamiyah may have been responsible for the hotel attack.
They have pointed to similarities between the hotel bombing and the October 12 blasts that killed 202 people on Indonesia’s Bali island – an attack also blamed on Jemaah Islamiyah. The bombs in both cases were made of the same mixture of explosives and used mobile phones as detonators.
Jemaah Islamiyah is accused of plotting or carrying out attacks in several Southeast Asian nations.
An Indonesian court on Thursday issued the first verdict in the Bali bombings, sentencing to death Amrozi bin Nurhasyim for buying the van and explosives used in the attack.
