Suspected Islamist suicide bombers detonated powerful devices at the Ritz-Carlton and JW Marriott hotels in an upmarket business district Friday, leaving nine dead and up to 50 injured including at least 18 foreigners.

A New Zealand businessman was confirmed dead and Australian Foreign Minister Stephen Smith, who is due in Jakarta later Saturday, said he feared the worst for three missing Australians, including diplomat Craig Senger.

National police chief General Bambang Hendarso Danuri called on hotels and shopping malls across the vast, mainly Muslim archipelago of 234 million people to raise their security protocols amid warnings of follow-up attacks.

A military spokesman said 500 troops were on standby to deploy in Jakarta in support of police.

Police across the Philippines were also on heightened alert over fears homegrown Islamists could try to emulate the Jakarta bombings, and citizens were urged to report any suspicious behaviour or unattended baggage.

Hotels in New York were also increasing security although Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly said there was no information that a Jakarta-style attack was imminent.

US President Barack Obama condemned the bombings and offered Indonesia help in the recovery effort.

“I strongly condemn the attacks that occurred this morning (Friday) in Jakarta and extend my deepest condolences to all of the victims and their loved ones,” he said.

Manchester United were due to stay at the Ritz-Carlton next week as part of an Asian tour but they cancelled the trip, denying a sell-out crowd of 100,000 the chance to see the English football giants play an Indonesia XI on Monday.

No group has claimed responsibility for the bombings, the worst in Indonesia since 2005, but suspicion inevitably fell on the Jemaah Islamiyah terror network responsible for the 2002 Bali attacks that killed 202 people.

Investigators said they found an unexploded bomb, as well as explosive chemicals and bomb-making materials in room 1808 of the Marriott, which they believe served as a control centre for the attackers.

The bombs were packed with nails, ballbearings, nuts and bolts to maximise the carnage, and appeared to be “identical” to ones previously used in JI attacks, police said.

They were also the same as bombs found in a recent raid on an Islamic boarding school in Central Java, carried out as part of the hunt for master-bombmaker Noordin Mohammed Top, leader of a JI splinter group.

Noordin is wanted for his role in the Bali attacks as well as a 2003 bombing at the Jakarta Marriott, which killed 12 people, and the 2005 truck-bombing of the Australian embassy in Jakarta.

President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, who was re-elected in a landslide on July 8, said the attack was an act of terror that would have “wide effects on our economy, trade, tourism and image in the eyes of the world”.

Tourism operators on the Hindu-majority resort island of Bali said they feared for the lucrative tourism industry, which was just getting back to normal after the horrific attacks of 2002.

“I am afraid that the tourism sector which is now thriving in Indonesia would be affected significantly,” Indonesian Chamber of Commerce and Industry representative for small businesses Sandiaga Uno told Anatara news agency.

“We hope that the bomb blasts would not deter foreign and domestic investors in making the investment in the country.”

Tourism is one of the biggest sources of foreign capital for Southeast Asia’s biggest economy, which has avoided recession in the global financial crisis, but needs more foreign investment to maintain its growth trajectory.

The country’s mainstream Muslim groups joined Yudhoyono and world leaders in condemning the attacks, saying they could never be justified in Islamic teachings.

Condemnation poured in from around the world including from UN chief Ban Ki-moon, and from Indonesia’s neighbours in Southeast Asia, where JI is accused of plotting to create a pan-Islamic state.

Indonesian police examine remains for clues

Imam Samudra, Amrozi bin Nurhasyim and his brother Mukhlas, who is also known as Ali Ghufron, were executed at 12:15 a.m. at Nusa Kampangan prison, said Jasman Panjaitan, a spokesman for Indonesia’s attorney-general.

Autopsies were performed the men before the bodies were turned over to their families, Panjaitan said.

Burial was to take place within 24 hours, per Muslim tradition.

The deadly bombing ripped through two popular nightclubs in Kuta, on the Indonesian resort island of Bali, in October 2002.

The blasts killed 202 people — more than half foreign tourists — and injured more than 300. Dozens of victims were burned beyond recognition or blown to pieces by the massive blasts. Video Watch CNN’s Dan Rivers report from Indonesia »

Among the dead were 88 Australians, 28 Britons and eight Americans, The Associated Press reported.

Peter Hughes, 48, who survived the bombings, said news of the executions took him back to “the actual moment” when the first bomb went off.

“We had to fight for our life pretty hard back then, and it’s a been a struggle every day since,” Hughes said.

More than half of his body was burned, and he had horrific cuts, he said. He said it took two years to recover from his injuries.

“I guess I’m truly lucky,” he said. “But you know, the scars on the outside to me aren’t so bad, but it’s what’s on the inside. You cope [with] it mentally, and I guess that’s the worst scar of all.

“You’re living that every day. And every day you’re actually going through it. It’s just a battle,” he said. “These three bombers who have been executed, it’s all over for them now, but I have to get up tomorrow and do exactly the same thing.”

Authorities blame the attacks on the al Qaeda-linked Jemaah Islamiyah, which aims to create a Muslim “superstate” across much of Southeast Asia.

Amrozi’s and Mukhlas’ brother, Ja’far Shodeq, said he still believes that his siblings were innocent.

He claimed that Amrozi was in their hometown, Tenggulun, the night of the attack watching football, despite Amrozi’s admission to CNN that he bought the explosive ingredients and the van used in the attack.

“It’s been a long journey, and it’s been six long years for this to work its way through the Indonesian judicial system, but it’s a good day because at least justice has been delivered, and the three people who were most responsible for this truly horrific atrocity have finally met the fate that they deserve,” said Sananand Dhume, author of “My Friend the Fanatic: Travels with an Indonesian Islamist.”

The men showed neither fear nor remorse in recent interviews with CNN. They had asked to be beheaded, saying it was the Islamic way of execution, but the execution was accomplished by firing squad.

A lawyer for the men said he sent a letter to the president of Indonesia but would not say what the letter said.

Speculation had grown in recent days that the executions were imminent when graves were dug in Tenggulun, in Indonesia’s East Java province.

One grave was dug this week for the brothers in the same cemetery where their father is buried.

On Saturday, Amrozi’s two wives and daughter, his brother’s two wives and the men’s brothers traveled to Nusakambangan Prison in central Java, where the men were executed, according to Antara, the national news agency of Indonesia. The agency quoted Abu Sholeh, head of the village of Tenggulun.

Hundreds of members of hardline Muslim groups have arrived in the village. Some threaten revenge and say others will take the place of Amrozi and Mukhlas.

Maria Kotronakis of Sydney, Australia, whose two sisters were killed, said she was angry that the men never showed remorse, but with the executions, “justice has been served.”

“By executing them, the Indonesian government has said, ‘No terrorists allowed,’ ” she added.

CNN.com

Two military helicopters stood by to airlift the corpses to the men’s home villages, where their wives and 13 children awaited their funerals.

The executions went ahead after lawyers for the men exhausted all legal avenues for appeal and President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono declined to grant clemency.

The men spent their last months in a maximum security jail on the prison colony of Nusa Kembangan, surrounded by snake-infested swamps.

Late last night they were led out through a thick steel door and past the white walls and barbed wire of the jail to three execution posts driven into the earth. A firing squad from the mobile brigade of the Indonesian police had been ready for months to carry out the sentences.

British relatives of the victims were sharply divided by last night’s executions.

Sue Cooper, 56, whose 46-year-old brother Paul Hussey died in the bombing, said: “I feel they should have been executed at the moment they were caught, and I’m sick of people who say that they don’t want them executed because they’ll become martyrs.”

Susanna Miller, 40, a London-based architect, lost her brother Dan, aged 31.

“The death penalty is an 18th-century punishment. My brother was a lawyer, he would have disapproved. Also, these men were low-level terrorists, the bigger ones are at large. They should have been given life sentences,” Miller said.

Maggie Stephens, 57, whose son Neil Bowler, 27, was killed, agreed. “By executing them we are doing to them what they did to us,” she said.

The condemned men were members of the southeast Asian group known as Jemaah Islamiah, which is seen as an ally of Al-Qaeda.

Imam Samudra, 38, was the planner who chose the targets and organised the two suicide bombers. Ali Ghufron, better know as Mukhlas, 48, was the financier, who met Osama Bin Laden in Afghanistan. Amrozi bin Nurhasyim, 47, dubbed “the smiling bomber”, was the mechanic who bought the explosives and the Mitsubishi van used as a car bomb.

On the night of Saturday, October 12, 2002, on the holiday island of Bali the first suicide bomber walked into Paddy’s Bar and set off a bomb in the middle of an international crowd. The second bomber waited for people to flee outside and then detonated the van, packed with more than a ton of explosives, outside the Sari Club. The bombings were a political and economic calamity for Indonesia, too.

The bombers’ last formal interview was given to The Sunday Times at the prison in February. “I am at the mercy of almighty Allah,” declared Samudra. “My only mission was to help the Muslims.

“Some try to make a link between Al-Qaeda and us. We are not linked. The only link is faith and teachings.”

Times Online

It is only a few hours since the spokesman for Indonesia’s attorney general made the announcement: that the country’s best-known prisoners – Amrozi, Ali Ghufron and Imam Samudra – are due to be executed at the beginning of next month.

But the news has travelled at lightning speed around the city.

“Yes, I’ve heard already,” Sidi tells me, lounging at a cafe table. “It’s too bad that justice in Indonesia takes a while. I think they should have been executed a while ago.”

Sitting next to him, his friend agrees: “The sooner the better. If we keep delaying it, it’s not good for other areas of the country where similar things may happen.”

‘They might do something’

It has been six years since the men co-ordinated the bomb attacks on the island of Bali, blowing up two nightclubs. They were packed with people: 202 died, Indonesians alongside Westerners; tourists, taxi drivers, nightclub staff.

The men on death row have never expressed remorse for the bombings; never regretted killing people they regard as infidels.

But there are very few Indonesians who support them. Eating a late lunch at a nearby table, Ratna says she’s happy Amrozi and the others will be executed next month.

“The only thing is,” she says, “I’m a little worried his followers may do something when the time comes.”

And that has been a key issue for the authorities here all along. Supporters of the radical Islamist group, Jemaah Islamiah, are expected to gather in their thousands after the execution to mark the passage of their comrades’ bodies back home for burial.

The security forces here say they are considering flying the bodies back rather than allowing the crowd a long and emotional trip by road.

Indonesia may be largely tolerant, but there is still a debate among some people over the role Islam should play here. And executing men who say they were defending Islamic values carries a risk.

BBC NEWS | Asia-Pacific | Relief and fear as executions near

Resource-rich Aceh was torn by conflict for nearly 30 years before a peace deal between Jakarta and the separatist Free Aceh Movement (GAM) in 2005.

The peace agreement has generally been regarded as successful although there are concerns next year’s election could fan tensions in the province on the northern tip of Sumatra.

The blast damaged two cars and the office windows of the Aceh Transitional Commission (KPA) office, said Ilsarudin, police chief of the provincial capital, Banda Aceh.

Police were questioning four witnesses, he added.

The explosion occurred about two weeks after the GAM founder, Hasan di Tiro, returned home from Sweden after more than 30 years in exile.

Reuters AlertNet