JAKARTA, Indonesia – A police post that was blown to pieces, puffs of smoke, splattered blood and dead bodies sprawled on the ground were only some of the horrors some Jakartans witnessed during a series of blasts that shook the downtown on Jl. MH Thamrin, Central Jakarta, on Thursday.
Several onlookers and passersby present during the incident offered chilling eyewitness accounts from different vantage points.
Husaeni, a bank officer whose office is located just one building away from the crime scene, said he heard several explosions and saw people screaming and running out of the Starbucks outlet. He was passing by the area by chance when the incident took place.
“I heard the explosion and I was shocked. I saw people fleeing [from the scene]. There were people lying on the ground outside Starbucks,” he said.
After a second explosion, Husaeni said he saw a young man in a black T-shirt and jeans begin to open fire in front of the Starbucks outlet.
“The shooter just shot aimlessly and did not show any fear,” he said.
The 52-year-old man said he also helped a police officer who was injured during the shoot-out with the perpetrators. According to Husaeni, the police officer ran toward him holding his bleeding stomach, asking for help. He then helped the officer to a safer place.
“It was hell out there,” he said.
Another witness, security guard Tri Feranto, said that he heard at least two explosions before shots were fired. When the gunshots were fired, he saw dozens of people running and the area abruptly turned eerily calm.
“Everyone was running and looking for a place to hide and cars were prohibited from passing by. The situation was frightening,” Tri said
Police closed access to the Thamrin area for about five hours.
Tri said that the perpetrators’ actions were synchronized and that the bombings and shootings were well planned. One of the shooters, Tri said, held and shot his gun in a natural manner.
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Another witness, 48-year-old Liston Panjaitan, was aboard a crowded Transjakarta bus traveling from Blok M in South Jakarta when the incident took place. He said he suddenly heard the sound of an explosion when the bus had just passed by the Sarinah intersection.
He later heard the second explosion. “It must have been a bigger bomb. The sound was louder,” Liston continued. Soon after the second bomb exploded, he saw bodies lying on the road.
An ojek (motorcycle taxi) driver with Go-Jek, Saiful Anwar, was at the scene of the explosion during the initial blast and subsequent gunfire. He described at least five Indonesian perpetrators, all of whom were carrying bags at the beginning of the attacks.
Saiful said he witnessed one civilian shot to death by the attackers during the initial gunfire.
“The perpetrators were armed with small firearms. When I started photographing the scene, gunshots started to ring out. There were several remaining attackers and they fired from the nearby [blown-up] Starbucks,” Saiful told reporters at the scene.
As of Thursday evening, police reported seven casualties, of which five were allegedly all of the perpetrators involved in the terror acts, plus two innocent victims: one Indonesian and one Canadian. Police have yet to release the identities of the dead.
The Thursday terrorist attack also left 24 people injured: 15 Indonesian civilians, five Indonesian police officers and four foreign nationals from Germany, the Netherlands, Algeria and Austria. The police’s statement of the chronology of the incident continued to change until late in the day. However, National Police spokesman Insp. Gen. Anton Charliyan said that the attack began when one person detonated a suicide bomb at the Starbucks coffee outlet in the Cakrawala Building.
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Anton said that two passersby, a Canadian and an Indonesian, were then held hostage by two other perpetrators. The Canadian man was reportedly killed, while the Indonesian was rescued. The perpetrators then opened fire at policemen, who fired back from behind a police car. During the shoot-out, two other suspects rode on a motorcycle toward a nearby police post, detonating another bomb.
After the last explosion, the police bomb squad raided the surrounding buildings and eventually found six bombs that had yet to be detonated.
Jakarta Police chief Insp. Gen. Tito Karnavian said the police had strong reasons to believe that terrorist Muhammad Bahrun Naim was the mastermind behind the attacks.
Bahrun Naim is no stranger to the police force. In November 2010, the National Police’s counterterrorism squad Densus 88 arrested him and confiscated hundreds of bullets from his house in Pasar Kliwon, Surakarta, Central Java.