ISIS claims responsibility for Jakarta attack, its first strike at Indonesia

JAKARTA (Reuters) – Islamic State said it was behind an attack by suicide bombers and gunmen in the heart of Jakarta on Thursday, the first time the radical group has targeted the world’s most populous Muslim nation.

Just seven people were killed despite multiple blasts and a gunfight, and five of them were the attackers themselves, but the brazenness of their siege suggested a new brand of militancy in a country where low-level strikes on police are common.

It took security forces about three hours to end the attack near a Starbucks cafe and Sarinah’s, Jakarta’s oldest department store, after a team of militants traded gunfire with police and blew themselves up.

An Indonesian and a Canadian were killed in the attack. Twenty people, including an Algerian, Austrian, German and Dutchman, were wounded.

“A group of soldiers of the caliphate in Indonesia targeted a gathering from the crusader alliance that fights the Islamic State in Jakarta,” the group said in a statement. It added that 15 people were killed.

Jakarta’s police chief told reporters: “ISIS is behind this attack definitely,” using a common acronym for Islamic State, and he named an Indonesian militant called Bahrun Naim as the man responsible for plotting it.

Police believe Naim is in the Syrian city of Raqqa.

The drama played out on the streets and on television screens, with at least six explosions and a gunfight in a movie theater. But the low death toll pointed to the involvement of local militants whose weapons were rudimentary, experts said.

In a sign of public unease, a bang caused by a tire bursting triggered a bomb scare that sent police cars rushing back to the scene hours after the attack.

“The president has said the nation and the people should not be scared and should not be defeated by acts of terror,” said palace spokesman Ari Dwipayana.

ARMORED CARS, HELICOPTERS

“The Starbucks cafe windows are blown out. I see three dead people on the road. There has been a lull in the shooting but someone is on the roof of the building and police are aiming their guns at him,” Reuters photographer Darren Whiteside said as the attack unfolded.

Police responded in force within minutes. Black armored cars screeched to a halt in front of the Starbucks and sniper teams were deployed around the neighborhood as helicopters buzzed overhead.

Jakarta police chief Tito Karnavian said one man entered the Starbucks cafe and blew himself up, wounding several inside.

As people poured out of the cafe, two waiting gunmen opened fire on them. At the same time, two militants attacked a police traffic post nearby, using what he described as hand grenade-like bombs.

After the militants had been overcome, a body still lay on the street, a shoe nearby among the debris. The city center’s notoriously jammed roads were largely deserted.

Indonesia has seen attacks by Islamist militants before, but a coordinated assault by a team of suicide bombers and gunmen is unprecedented and has echoes of the sieges seen in Mumbai seven years ago and in Paris last November.

Australian Attorney-General George Brandis, who was in Jakarta recently to bolster security coordination, told the Australian newspaper he had “no doubt” Islamic State was seeking to establish a “distant caliphate” in Indonesia.

The last major militant attacks in Jakarta were in July 2009, with bombs at the JW Marriott and Ritz Carlton hotels.

The country had been on edge for weeks over the threat posed by Islamist militants.

Counter-terrorism police had rounded up about 20 people with suspected links to Islamic State, whose battle lines in Syria and Iraq have included nationals from several Asian countries.

HISTORY OF ATTACKS

Indonesia has the world’s largest Muslim population, the vast majority of whom practise a moderate form of Islam.

The country saw a spate of militant attacks in the 2000s, the deadliest of which was a nightclub bombing on the holiday island of Bali that killed 202 people, most of them tourists.

Police have been largely successful in destroying domestic militant cells since then, but officials have more recently been worrying about a resurgence inspired by groups such as Islamic State and Indonesians who return after fighting with the group.

Alarm around the world over the danger stemming from Islamic State increased after the Paris attacks and the killing of 14 people in California in December.

On Tuesday, a Syrian suicide bomber killed 10 German tourists in Istanbul. Authorities there suspect the bomber had links to Islamic State.

Speaking in London, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry condemned Thursday’s attack.

“There is nothing in any act of terror that offers anything but death and destruction. And so we stand together, all of us, united in our efforts to eliminate those who choose terror,” he said.

Harits Abu Ulya, a expert on militancy who knows Bahrun Naim, the militant named by Indonesian authorities, said he expected more attacks.

“This is an indication that he has been learning from the Paris attacks and he has studied the strategy,” he said. “I still have doubts about the capability of the local militants to carry out attacks on a bigger scale. But it is a possibility.”

(Aditional reporting by Fergus Jensen, Gayatri Suroyo, Nilufar Rizki, Eveline Danubrata, Randy Fabi and Fransiska Nangoy; Writing by John Chalmers; Editing by Nick Macfie and Mike Collett-White)

Indonesia, Japan hit by magnitude 6.0-plus quakes 30 minutes apart

A pair of magnitude 6.0-plus earthquakes occurred within 30 minutes of each other on Tuesday.

Both earthquakes were located in the Pacific Ocean, hundreds of miles apart. Neither earthquake produced reports of significant damage and no tsunami warnings were issued.

According to the United States Geological Survey, a magnitude 6.5 earthquake occurred in the water between Indonesia and the Philippines at 12:38 a.m. local time. A half-hour later, the USGS reported a magnitude 6.2 earthquake deep below the Earth’s surface in the Sea of Japan.

The first quake was centered a few miles southeast of the Talaud Islands of Indonesia, and the USGS reported the tremors caused strong shaking there. While the quake was more than 100 miles away from larger cities, user-submitted data published on the USGS website indicated some people reported weak shaking approximately 200 miles away in Manado, Philippines.

The earthquake was triggered about 13 miles below the Earth’s surface, the USGS reported, while the earthquake that followed in Japan occurred at a much larger depth of 150 miles.

The Japan earthquake was centered about 46 miles northwest of Rumoi and 610 miles north of Tokyo. But because it occurred so far underground, those on the surface didn’t feel its full effect.

The Japan Meteorological Association reported most parts of the country experienced a 2 on its own seismic scale of 0-7, which usually carries only weak shaking and can be undetected by humans.

Indonesian Volcanoes Strand Travelers Returning Home

With the Muslim holy month of Ramadan coming to an end, thousands of Muslims who were trying to travel home for the Muslim Eid festival are stranded in Indonesia because of a series of volcanic eruptions.

Officials concerned about safety for aircraft shut down four small airports on Java, the nation’s most populous island after the latest eruption by Mount Raung.  The same volcano last week shut down airports in the region including Bali’s Denpasar International. Volcanic ash is a concern for aircraft not because of visibility but because the ash turned into a form of molten glass when sucked into a jet engine.

The government has raised the alert level for Mount Raung to the second-highest level because of the hot ash and lava shooting from the mountain.

Then Mount Gamalama erupted on the nation’s North Maluku island shutting down Sultan Babullah International airport in Ternate.

Indonesia lies on the Pacific Ring of Fire.

Indonesian Volcano Blankets Provincial Capital With Ash

Indonesia’s Mount Sinabung has now released a plume of ash strong enough to cover the provincial capital of North Sumatra.

The residents of Medan now have to don masks to be able to breathe when they step outside of their homes or businesses.  The city is located 31 miles from the volcano and has a population of 3.4 million people.

The monitoring post watching the mountain says seven hot ash avalanches slid down the mountain on Wednesday for a distance of 10,500 feet.  The ash cloud from the eruptions rose over a mile into the sky.

Mount Sinabung, located on the Pacific Ring of Fire, had been dormant for 400 years before roaring to life in 2010.  Scientists who are investigating the rebirth of dormant volcanoes have published a study suggesting that earthquakes could be the cause.

Solid Earth, the journal of the European Geosciences Union, suggests that “megathrust earthquakes” in the region around previously dormant volcanoes could be the cause of new eruptions.  In the case of Mount Sinabung, three megathrust quakes between 2005 and 2007 could have sparked the volcano’s 2010 awakening. These earthquakes include the magnitude 8.6 earthquake in 2005, the magnitude 7.9 earthquake in 2007, and another magnitude 8.4 earthquake in 2007.

Indonesia Evacuates More Due To Volcano

Indonesian officials are evacuating hundreds more residents near Mount Sinabung as the volcano continues to increase a lava flow and eruptions.

Gede Suantika, government volcanologist, said that 28 hot ash avalanches took place in one day on Mount Sinabung.  The lava dome on the mountain continues to build in size creating the  possibility of a serious eruption.

The number of people evacuated in recent weeks has topped 3,000.

The circle of exclusion around the mountain is now 3 miles.  Residents forced to flee have been complaining about the forced evacuation, saying they are farmers and they have no way to make a living if they are forced off their land.

However, a Saturday blast of hot ash spread two miles from the volcano, leading the government to expand the forced evacuation and removal of angry residents.

The mountain has caused scientists to keep it on the highest alert level since June 2 with a lava dome estimated at 106 million cubic feet.

The mountain came alive after 400 years of dormancy in 2010.  Last year, an eruption left 17 people dead.  The mountain is on the Pacific Ring of Fire.

Strong Undersea Earthquake in Indonesia

Indonesia was struck by a strong undersea earthquake on Wednesday but there were no reports of immediate injuries or damage.

No tsunami warning was issued.

The U.S. Geological Survey registered the quake at magnitude 6.6.  The epicenter was 85 miles northwest of Ternate, the capital of the North Maluku province.  It was 25 miles deep.

Ternate residents said they felt strong jolts from the quake but no buildings were destroyed despite swaying.

Indonesia is prone to earthquakes because of their position on the Pacific Ring of Fire.

Indonesia Volcano Erupts

A volcano in Eastern Indonesia erupted Friday, sending hot ash into the air and surprising hikers all over the mountain.

Officials say that nine people were injured and at least one person is missing as the hot ash continues to fall on the mountain.

A spokesman for Indonesia’s Disaster Mitigation Agency said that Mount Gamalama sent a plume of smoke over 6,500 feet into the sky.  Slow moving lava has been moving down the peak but no evacuation orders have been issued to surrounding villages.

The airport in Ternate, about 20 miles from the volcano, has been forced to close.  Schools and offices were also closed and evacuated because of the ash.

Mount Gamalama, located on the Pacific Ring of Fire, had its last major eruption in 2012.

Jakarta Gets First Christian Governor In 50 Years

Muslims throughout Indonesia are furious over the swearing in of Jakarta’s first Christian governor in nearly 50 years.

Basuki Tjahaja Purnama had been acting governor since Joko Widodo stepped aside to become the country’s President.

Indonesia has the world’s largest Muslim population and has been experiencing a wave of religious intolerance from Muslim hard liners angered that other religions have been given freedom to worship.  The new president has vowed to protect religious minorities.

“I don’t need to be approved by everyone,” Purnama told reporters. “The ones that deny me aren’t Jakartans. They come from Bekasi, Depok, Bogor, which are not in my territory.”

Purnama is also the first ethnic Chinese governor of Jakarta.  He is known as a transparent, no-nonsense leader who focuses on elimination of corruption in government.

Indonesian Volcano Eruption Kills 3

A volcanic eruption on Indonesia’s most populated island killed three people and forced more than 100,000 to flee their homes.

The debris and ash cloud from the Mount Kelud eruption spread over such a wide area that seven different airports had to be closed because of unsafe conditions.

“The eruption sounded like thousands of bombs exploding,” Ratno Pramono, a 35-year-old farmer, told FoxNews. “I thought doomsday was upon us. Women and children were screaming and crying.”

Indonesia’s disaster agency said they had reports of the eruption from 125 miles away.  The ash covered the country’s second largest city, Surabaya, and its population of 3 million.  In one city dozens of miles from the mountain, the ash fall was so significant it turned day into night.

The disaster agency said they were monitoring the volcano, which is still trembling, but they believe there will not be another eruption.  All towns within six miles of the volcano have been abandoned.

Mount Sinabung Sparking Volcanic Tornadoes

They look like tornadoes and they cause destruction like a tornado.

Except they’re really made of scalding hot white ash from the pyroclastic flow from Indonesia’s Mount Sinabung which has been in the midst of major eruptions.

A web video released on YouTube is showing a  massive pyroclastic flow rushing down the mountain and destroying everything in its path with hot gas and ash.  In the wake of the flow, the video shows multiple tornado-like vortexes that continue to spin and create debris.

Scientists say the twisters technically aren’t tornadoes because there is no cumulonimbus cloud at the top.  The phenomenons are more like dust devils seen throughout the desert southwest.  Heat from the flow causes hot air near the ground to rapidly rise.

The smoke from the volcano is not really smoke but vaporized rock from the heat of the volcano.