Indonesia hotel blasts: Another Australian confirmed dead

By DPA,

Jakarta : Australian trade official Craig Senger was among those killed in last week’s bomb attacks on two luxury hotels in the Indonesian capital, bringing the number of known foreign fatalities to five, the police and media reports said Monday.


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Three Australians and one Singaporean were among those killed in Friday morning’s blasts, while a New Zealand business executive died of his injuries Friday.

Bombs exploded at the tightly guarded JW Marriott and Ritz-Carlton hotels in Jakarta at breakfast time Friday, killing a total of nine people and injuring at least 53 others.

National police spokesman Sulistyo Ishak said that according to results from the Disaster Victim Identification team, another body had been confirmed as that of Craig Senger of Australia, bringing the number of Australians to have been killed in the bomb attacks to three.

The bodies of two Australians were identified earlier as those of business executives Nathan Verity and Garth McEvoy, the spokesman said.

Police said they suspected the attacks were carried out by suicide bombers who checked into the hotels as guests and assembled the bombs in one of the hotel rooms.

Indonesian authorities said the perpetrators of the bombings were from Jemaah Islamiyah, a terrorist group linked to Al Qaeda, saying the explosives were identical to those used by the group in other attacks, such as in the Bali attacks in 2002 and 2005.

The police said Sunday that the bomb equipment used was similar to some that the police found recently during raids in Cilacap, Central Java.

Terrorist experts said Friday’s bombings at the JW Marriott and Ritz-Carlton hotels were believed to have been masterminded by Noordin Mohammed Top, Indonesia’s most-wanted man for his alleged role in a series of bombings in the country.

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