Jakarta car bombing kills 11, injures 161

Australian leaders on Thursday strongly condemned the bomb blast outside the Australian Embassy in Indonesian capital of Jakarta which have killed eight people, injuring some 160 more.

Prime Minister John Howard said Australia will not be intimidated by terrorism, vowing Australia will try its best to cooperate with Indonesia to track down the terrorists responsible for the blast.

He said although he has no advice that Australia is now at morerisk of a terror attack, he wants to assure Australians that "our vigilance against any potential terrorist threats remains absoluteand everything will be done to ensure that such incidents do not occur in our country."

Security has been stepped up in the state of New South Wales although police said earlier in the day there has been no specific terrorist threat in the lead-up to the federal election scheduled on Oct. 9.

A cross-agency security committee has been set up and hundreds of police officers are undergoing riot training in order to avoid similar terrorist attack in Spain which killed more than 200 people in March just ahead of Spain's election.

Howard said the travel advisory for Indonesia has been revised to tell people what had happened.

Australian Foreign Minister Alexander Downer said it is clear that the bombing is a terrorist attack directed towards Australia.

He will travel to Jakarta on Thursday night to deal with the issue by Howard's plane for the election campaign.

Opposition leader Mark Latham also condemned the terrorists responsible for the blast as "evil and barbaric," saying they must be punished "as harshly as possible."

Latham called off his Labor party's planned campaign activitiesfor Friday to show respect for those were killed and injured in the bombing.

Clive Williams, a terrorist expert in Australian National University's director of terrorism studies, said he agreed with the federal government that the Jemaah Islamiah (JI), a terrorist network, was likely behind the bombing.

He said JI certainly has "the capabilities to do these sorts ofthings and they certainly have the intent," adding experts have predicted a second attack on Australia by JI for some time.

JI is the group behind the Bali bombing in 2002, which killed more than 200 people, including 88 Australians.

Qantas, one of Australia's leading airlines, said it will increase flight capacity from Jakarta from Friday to help bring Australians home from Indonesia in the wake of the blast.

Analysts say the bombing would affect the looming federal election in Australia.

Source: Xinhua