Jakarta attack documented on social media

Suicide bombings and gunfire rocked the Indonesian capital of Jakarta, Thursday, leaving at least 7 dead, including five suspected attackers. The Islamic State group has claimed responsibility for the attack, which took place in a commercial district of the city, which is mostly Muslim and home to many embassies and United Nations offices.

Following the initial explosion at a Starbucks, police said, two foreigners were taken hostage by armed men. One man, from Algeria, was able to escape with bullet wounds, but the other hostage, who was reportedly from Canada, was killed by the gunmen.

Four police officers were in critical condition after two suicide bombers detonated explosives inside a police post.

Police in Jakarta were already reporting that the five suspects were dead and that the situation was under control by the time Western media was rising Thursday morning. But on social media, civilians and reporters on the ground in Jakarta continue to provide unsettling images of the attack and its aftermath.

According to his Twitter profile, Khalid Khan is a Karachi-based “cyber journalist working with Pakistan’s largest media group.” On Twitter Thursday, Khan shared videos — which he said were posted by local people in Jakarta — that appear to capture shootings and the moment of the explosion at the Starbucks.

Another amateur video appears to show two people doing something in the parking lot in front of Starbucks before they are engulfed in an explosion. The message tweeted along with the video reads, “Attackers accidentally kill himself.”

Leisha Chi, a BBC reporter based in Jakarta, tweeted several photos of the damage — and swift cleanup — outside the attacked police post.

In this video from Channel NewsAsia, Manfred Stoifl, an Austrian national who was injured in the blasts, describes his account of the attack in English.

According to his Twitter profile, Stoifl is the Indonesia country director for the Starkey Hearing Foundation and managing director of the Singapore-based Hearing Solution Company. He told Channel NewsAsia that he was in Jakarta on business and sitting in the Starbucks when there was “suddenly a loud, big flash and a loud bang.”

“By the time I was conscious again, I looked around and Starbucks was basically gone, and there was just a few people still there,” Stoifl said. He described climbing out of the window of Starbucks and getting picked up by some Indonesian people in a car who took him and another injured person to a nearby hospital.

“I’ve burns on my arms and my face. I actually have two screws in my arms,” Stoifl told Channel NewsAsia. “They gave me some painkillers, they dressed my wounds. It soothes the lacerations. I had two very, very big cuts.”

Other regional news outlets — including People’s Daily China, Singapore’s the Straight Times and the Star, Malaysia’s English-language daily — continue to publish photos and updates from the scene.