www.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml?type=worldNews&storyID=6195871
MORE By Achmad Sukarsono and Dan Eaton JAKARTA (Reuters) - A powerful car bomb exploded outside the Australian embassy in Jakarta on Thursday, killing at least nine people and wounding 182 in an attack Indonesian police blamed on Islamic militants linked to al Qaeda. The bomb exploded ahead of a presidential election in the world's most populous Muslim nation and exactly 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 Foreign Minister Alexander Downer flew to Jakarta late on Thursday with a team of forensics experts, who immediately went to help local police scour the scene. Our officials will do everything they can to help the Indonesians hunt down the people responsible for this brutality," Downer told reporters. Health officials said nine Indonesians were killed and 182 people, mainly Indonesians, wounded. One of those badly hurt was a five-year-old Australian girl, whose Indonesian mother was killed, Downer said. The girl had become an Australian citizen and was about to get her passport. Indonesian police said the attack bore all the hallmarks of Jemaah Islamiah, an al Qaeda-linked Islamic network blamed for previous blasts in Indonesia such as the Bali bomb attacks in 2002 that killed 202 people, including 88 Australians. It was also accused of a suicide bomb blast at Jakarta's JW Marriott Hotel in August 2003 that killed 12 people. "We will direct our investigation toward those behind the Bali and Marriott bomb attacks we have yet to catch," police chief General Da'i Bachtiar told a news conference, adding it was too early to say if it was a suicide bomb attack. He specifically singled out Azahari Husin, a Malaysian bomb making expert in Jemaah Islamiah, for blame. Azahari is believed to have been the key bombmaker in the Bali and Marriott blasts. Jemaah Islamiah wants to set up a pan-Islamic state in Southeast Asia.
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