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Five Killed In Suspected Suicide Bombing In Jakarta

There has been a spike in terror-related arrests in Indonesia in the past year.
Police guard at a scene of an explosion in Jakarta on Wednesday night.
Darren Whiteside / Reuters
Police guard at a scene of an explosion in Jakarta on Wednesday night.

Three police officers and two suspected suicide bombers have been killed in twin blasts near a busy bus terminal in East Jakarta.

Five other police officers and five civilians were also wounded in the attack, which took place a few minutes apart at a bus stop near the Kampung Melayu terminal around 9pm on Wednesday night (6pm AEST).

National Police spokesman Setyo Wasisto told Fairfax Media that the explosions took place between the bus terminal toilet and the parking lot.

Images of bloodied body parts emerged as heavily armed police cordoned off the area.

Locals had been crowding onto the streets to watch a torch parade to celebrate the beginning of the month of Ramadan, which begins on Friday. Police were providing security for the parade.

No one has yet claimed responsibility for the attack and the identities of the suspects have not been released.

Wasisto said the explosives appeared to have been packed into pressure cookers, Reuters reports.

Police guard the scene of the twin explosions on Wednesday night.
Darren Whiteside / Reuters
Police guard the scene of the twin explosions on Wednesday night.

A similar bomb was used in February in Bandung, a city 150km south-east of Jakarta, by a lone attacker who was killed by police. Authorities suspected that assailant of having links to a radical network sympathetic to ISIS.

In January 2016, a series of bombings and gun attacks killed four people, including one police officer, in the heart of Jakarta.

Indonesian authorities have attributed a sharp rise in the number of small-scale terror attacks in the nation to the influence of Islamic State.

Police had processed 170 alleged terrorists in 2016, up from 82 the previous year, national police chief Tito Karnavian reported.

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