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Jakarta Update: Marriott Responds to Security Concerns

After last week's attacks on the JW Marriott Jakarta and Ritz-Carlton Jakarta hotels where suicide bombers killed a total of nine victims (including themselves), Marriott is responding by assuring the public that security measures were in place at the time of the blasts — and that the company will be looking into ramping up security in their properties.

Sadly, this is not the first time in the last several years that Marriott hotels have been a target of major attacks. In 2003, another attack on the JW Marriott Jakarta killed 12 people, and in 2008, dozens were killed in a Marriott Islamabad bombing.

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Jakarta Update: Suicide Bombers Were 'Posing As Hotel Guests'

Yesterday's attacks on the JW Marriott Jakarta and the Ritz-Carlton Jakarta have left eight people dead and 150 injured. According to current reports, "suicide bombers posing as hotel guests" are thought to have caused the explosions. Additionally, authorities found and defused a third bomb up in a guestroom on the eighteenth floor of the JW Marriott. The alleged bombers were supposedly guests at the Marriott.

Times Online describes the terrifying scene:

Bleeding victims, including foreign businessmen who had been in breakfast meetings, crawled and staggered out of the JW Marriott and Ritz Carlton hotels in Jakarta’s Mega Kuningan business district after the explosions struck two minutes apart shortly before 8am.

Footage from a security camera at the Ritz-Carlton showed a suited man wearing a baseball cap, and carrying a backpack and a wheeled suitcase, entering the hotel’s first floor restaurant just before the explosion, which killed two people.

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Breaking: Fatal Blasts at JW Marriott, Ritz-Carlton Jakarta

Some very sad news to report: at least two explosions hit the Ritz-Carlton and the JW Marriott hotels in Jakarta today.

According to the AFP:

Witnesses said they saw injured people being evacuated by car from the Ritz-Carlton hotel in the upscale Mega Kuningan business district in the centre of the city.

Police sealed off the area near the Ritz-Carlton and the JW Marriott hotels, an AFP correspondent said. Windows had been blown out of a second-storey restaurant at the Ritz Carlton.

The number of injuries is still unknown, though the Breaking News Wire Twitter is reporting six dead and 18 injured so far.

Sadly, this JW Marriott was also the site of a deadly terrorist attack in 2003.

We'll keep you updated on this story as it develops.

[Photo: Twitpic via The Age]