Militants staged a bloody suicide bomb and gun attack Thursday outside a Starbucks cafe, among other locations, in Indonesia’s capital of Jakarta, leaving at least seven people dead from what police said were half a dozen separate explosions.
Police engaged the attackers in a long, running gunfight in the wake of the attack, in which five of the attackers and two others were killed, the Associated Press reported.
According to Australia Broadcasting, bodies were seen lying in the streets during the ensuing battle.
While no group immediately claimed responsibility for the attack, a police spokesman, Anton Charliyan, told reporters that authorities had “received a threat from Islamic State that Indonesia will be the spotlight.” But Indonesia’s President Joko Widodo asked that the public avoid speculation about who was responsible for the attack.
The area where the attack occurred includes several embassies, a building that houses the Starbucks and Indonesia’s central bank.
A
police armored vehicle is parked outside a Starbucks cafe near where an
explosion went off in Jakarta, Indonesia Thursday. (Achmad Ibrahim/AP)
It
was unclear how many people took part in the assault or whether
Starbucks itself was targeted, or the Skyline Building in which it is
housed.In 2009, militants staged attacks at two other high-profile symbols of U.S. capitalism, a JW Marriott hotel and a Ritz Carlton hotel.
Indonesian officials had warned last month of a “credible threat” of an attack in the world’s largest Muslim nation and, according to AP, brought out 150,000 security personnel to keep an eye on churches, airports and other places.
On Jan. 3, the U.S. Embassy in Jakarta warned Americans of “a potential threat” against U.S.-associated hotels and
banks in Surabaya, about 500 miles east of Jakarta on the island of Java.
Members of a medical team carry the body of a victim into an ambulance at the scene of a bomb blast in Jakarta, Indonesia, on January 14. 2016. (Roni Bintang/EPA)