Suicide bombers posing as hotel guests are believed to have been responsible for the explosions in two hotels that killed at least eight people in Jakarta yesterday and wounded more than 50, in the first such attack in Indonesia for almost four years. Bleeding victims, some of them foreign businessmen who, moments earlier, had been engaged in breakfast meetings, limped or crawled out of the JW Marriott hotel and the neighbouring Ritz-Carlton in Jakarta’s Mega Kuningan business district after the explosions, which came 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.

Anti-terrorism officers later found and defused a bomb in a room on the 18th floor of the Marriott, where six people were killed by an explosion in the ground-floor lobby. The same hotel was attacked in 2003, when 12 people died in a suicide bombing.

Police said that yesterday’s bombers were guests in the Marriott hotel. “Based on the evidence at the scene, we found that there were two suicide bombers,” Indonesia’s national police chief, Bambang Hendarso Danuri, said.

The dead included Tim Mackay, a New Zealander who was the president of an Indonesian cement company, and Craig Senger, a senior trade official at the Australian Embassy in Jakarta. According to Indonesian police, citizens of the United States, South Korea, the Netherlands, Italy, Britain, Canada, Norway, Japan and India, as well as Indonesia, were among the injured.

The Manchester United football team had been booked to stay in the Ritz-Carlton next week, before a match against an Indonesian team.

Speaking in the Malaysian capital, Kuala Lumpur, where the team has also been playing, the manager, Sir Alex Ferguson, announced that the Indonesian leg of the South-East Asian tour had been cancelled.

“There’s no other decision we could have taken in regards to the safeguarding of our players,” he said. “We feel we’ve made the right decision.”

Authorities said that it was too early to identify those responsible, but immediate suspicion will fall on Islamic extremists who have carried out other deadly attacks in Indonesia in the past decade — including the Bali bombings in 2002 and the 2003 Marriott attack. On that occasion terrorists drove a lorry loaded with explosives up to the hotel entrance and detonated it.

Since then security at all of Jakarta’s upmarket hotels has been extremely vigilant. Vehicles are searched and all visitors have to pass through metal detectors and show the contents of their bags. The Marriott and Ritz-

Carlton were known for being more stringent than most.

The attackers’ success in smuggling explosives indicates a high level of planning and organisation — and, possibly, complacency in security.

Indonesia’s President, Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono told a news conference that the bombings were the act of a terrorist group determined to harm Indonesia’s standing in the world.

“They do not have a sense of humanity and do not care about the destruction of our country,” he said in an emotional televised speech. “This terror act will have a wide impact on our economy, our business climate, our tourism, our image in the world and many others.”

Mr Yudhoyono said: “Those who carried out this attack and those who planned it will be arrested and tried according to the law.”

The Australian Government advised travellers to think twice before travelling to Indonesia. “We advise you to reconsider your need to travel to Indonesia, including Bali, at this time due to the very high threat of terrorist attack,” the Foreign Ministry said.

The British Government’s overall level of advice did not change, but it urged travellers to stay away from the Mega Kuningan area and to avoid unnecessary journeys within Jakarta.

Times Recommends

• Both sides blame US for worsening relations
• Stieg Larsson: losing the plot over his cash
• Odd creature paralysed by incompatible parts