It's 'only a brick' at 'RRI'

JAKARTA (JP): The National Police bomb squad revealed Tuesday that the object originally believed to have been an explosive device at the state-run Radio Republik Indonesia (RRI) building in Central Jakarta was "merely a brick", an officer has said.

"We've been fooled again, it's only a brick," a source at the squad told The Jakarta Post.

According to the officer, the brick was neatly wrapped with bundles of papers and a white plastic sheet.

As has been reported earlier, the object was found on Monday evening by the squad members on the second floor of the eight- story RRI building on Jl. Medan Merdeka Barat.

The team rushed to the site following emergency calls about a bomb threat received by an on-duty broadcaster.

The source said that similar objects thought to be bombs taken from the BNI 46 tower on Jl. Sudirman recently were also "just bricks".

"What we took from the BNI tower were also bricks wrapped in papers put inside plastic bags," the source said. (emf)