Suicide bombers attacked a pair of high-end hotels in Jakarta on Friday morning, killing at least eight people and injuring more than 50 others, including two Canadians.
Police said the bombing suspects had stayed at the J.W. Marriott in the Indonesian capital, which sits next door to the Ritz-Carlton, the second luxury hotel that was attacked on Friday morning.
Officials said the Marriott was hit at 7:45 a.m., local time, and the second blast hit the Ritz-Carlton two minutes later.
Jakarta police Chief Maj.-Gen. Wahyono said two suspects had smuggled their explosives into the Marriott, where additional bombing materials were found after the pair of blasts.
"There were several perpetrators," Wahyono told reporters. "They were disguised as guests and stayed in room 1808."
Another police official said the suspects had used the 18th-floor hotel room as their "command post," where they built their bombs since checking into the hotel on July 15.
A meeting of a number of top foreign business executives was underway at the Marriott at the time of the attacks.
The explosions sent showers of glass and assorted debris into the street. Authorities later used police trucks to carry bodies away from the scene.
Officials at the Canadian Embassy in Jakarta confirmed that two Canadians were among the foreigners injured in Friday's blasts.
Edward Thiessen, a 51-year-old Canadian businessman, was on the hotel's ground floor at the time of the explosion.
"It was so black and so dark, the air was full of dust and black soot, I was trying to find my table cloth to put over my mouth," Thiessen told The Canadian Press in an interview from a Jarkarta hospital.
"I just thought 'Oh my gosh.' I thought about my wife and daughter, wondering if I'm trapped in some debris here, it might take forever to dig out. I didn't know whether the building had fallen down around us or what had happened."
Thiessen works for the French power generation and rail transportation company Alstom, where he is the country president in Indonesia.
The other injured Canadian is Andrew Cobham, a businessman who moved to Asia in the early 1990s.
Other foreign nationals injured
Indonesian anti-terror forces rushed to the hotels following the explosions and authorities blocked off access to local hotels.
Security Minister Widodo Adi Sucipto said one of the dead was from New Zealand. He said 17 other foreigners were injured in the blasts on Friday, including people from Australia, Hong Kong, India, Italy, the Netherlands, Norway, South Korea, the U.S. and Britain.
The New Zealand victim was identified as 62-year-old Timothy David Mackay. Like the injured Canadians, he was attending a business meeting at the Marriott.
Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono blamed the attack on a "terrorist group" and vowed to apprehend those responsible for the carnage.
"Those who carried out this attack and those who planned it will be arrested and tried according to the law," Yudhoyono told a news conference.
U.S. President Barack Obama condemned the "outrageous attacks" and said his government is ready to help Indonesia in its struggle against extremism.
A U.S. state department spokesperson said eight U.S. citizens were injured in the blasts, though not suffered life-threatening injuries.
Foreign Affairs Minister Lawrence Cannon issued a statement saying: "Canada condemns the shameful and cowardly attacks on two hotels in Jakarta, which have killed and injured scores of civilians."
Suspicion immediately fell to Jemaah Islamiyah -- the terrorist group that bombed the same Marriott six years ago -- being responsible for the blasts.
It has been four years since Indonesia has seen a major terrorist attack, the last being a triple suicide bombing targeting Bali restaurants that killed 20 people.
In recent years, Indonesian officials have tried to sweep out suspected terrorists, with police claiming to have detained many of the most senior members of the al Qaeda-linked Jemaah Islamiyah. Hundreds of others have also been taken into custody.
Terrorism expert Eric Margolis said that authorities had believed that Jemaah Islamiyah was largely broken up by Indonesian authorities and the CIA.
"It's leader is in American custody somewhere and the organization was really torn down," he told CTV Friday. "Nobody has claimed the attack...but certainly there's some very angry and dangerous people there in the wings."
With files from The Associated Press and The Canadian Press
