At least one dead in Jakarta 'suicide bombing attack'

Jakarta (AFP) - A suspected suicide bombing rocked a busy bus terminal in the Indonesian capital Jakarta Wednesday, killing one policeman in the latest terror attack to hit the Muslim-majority country.

Five police officers were also injured in the explosion at the bus station in the east of the city.

"There has been a bomb, for now we suspect it is a suicide bombing," deputy national police chief Syafruddin, who like many Indonesians goes by one name, told TV station TVOne.

He said the bomber was killed along with one police officer, adding that five other policemen were injured.

"The police personnel had been providing security," to people in the area, he added.

The terminal, Kampung Melayu, is a local hub served by minibuses and buses. It is a working class district of the city, not popular with foreigners or tourists.

Police and witnesses said earlier they had heard two blasts during the attack.

"At first I saw smoke and shattered glass, the earth was shaking, I was shocked. After a few minutes there was another blast," a woman at the terminal, Rosmala, a shopkeeper who goes by only one name, told AFP.

Another eyewitness, Sultan Muhammad Firdaus, told local television station Kompas TV that he had heard two explosions.

"I was on a flyover and then I heard the first explosion... There was a 10 minute gap between the two explosions."

"The explosions were quite loud, I could hear them clearly," he said.

East Jakarta police chief Andry Wibowo said that the damage at the bus terminal indicated that the explosion had been "pretty big".

Indonesia, the world's most populous Muslim-majority country, has long struggled with Islamic militancy and hundreds of radicals from the Southeast Asian state have flocked to fight with IS, sparking fears that weakened extremist outfits could get a new lease of life.

A gun and suicide attack in the capital Jakarta left four attackers and four civilians dead in January last year, and was the first assault claimed by the Islamic State group in Southeast Asia.

Indonesia has suffered a series of Islamic militant attacks in the past 15 years, including the 2002 Bali bombings that killed 202 people, mostly foreign tourists.

A sustained crackdown weakened the most dangerous networks but the emergence of IS has proved a potent new rallying cry for radicals.

Numerous recent IS-linked plots in Indonesia have been botched or foiled, with analysts saying that many of the country's militants lack the capacity to launch serious attacks.