Three bomb hoaxes cause high anxiety among Jakartans

JAKARTA (JP): The capital was rocked by three bomb hoaxes at two supermarket outlets and a department store on Wednesday.

Although all of the threats turned out to be hoaxes, they were enough to unnerve city residents still recovering from the shock of the bomb blast at a Ramayana department store on Jl. Sabang in Central Jakarta last Saturday.

Hero supermarkets in South Jakarta and Bekasi and a Ramayana outlet in South Jakarta were the targets of Wednesday's hoaxes.

The first threat was received by Diana, a telephone operator at the Hero supermarket on Jl. Gatot Subroto, at about 9:30 a.m. The call was made by an unidentified man.

"A male voice said 'there's a bomb here and it will explode at 11 a.m.'," Diana recalled.

She immediately reported the threat to her superiors and to the police.

Customers and employees were then evacuated from the building along with employees from other offices located in the same 14- story building.

When the Gegana police bomb squad arrived at the site they sealed off the whole area before beginning a three-hour search in the supermarket, which is on the ground floor of the building.

At about 1 p.m., the area was declared safe and reopened to the public.

John Soeyatna, the manager of the outlet, listed a number of possible motives for the threat.

"Perhaps it's related to the massive laid-off of Hero employees last year. Or maybe someone wants to discredit Hero's public image so people will be afraid to shop here," he said.

Just before leaving the site, the bomb squad was alerted to a second bomb threat at the Ramayana department store in Tebet, just under three kilometers from the Hero supermarket.

Store officials said they received two phone calls from an unidentified man warning them that a bomb had been planted on the premises.

The first call was received by a receptionist, Sunarti. The man told her he would phone back in 15 minutes.

A policeman, Chief Sgt. Subari, received the next call.

"At about 1 p.m., he called back and said 'five minutes more and I will detonate the 'thing' I installed this morning'," recalled Subari.

After evacuation, the bomb squad began a search of the store, which occupies the second and third floors of the city-owned Tebet Barat market building.

Like the earlier threat at Hero, the calls turned out to be a hoax.

Then at 5:50 p.m., a third threat was received at the Hero supermarket at Jatiwaringin in Pondok Gede, Bekasi.

While awaiting the arrival of the bomb squad, local police officers evacuated employees and customers from the building.

The site was declared free three hours later after the bomb squad found no suspicious packages at the site.

When asked to comment on the wave of hoaxes, Jakarta police spokesman Lt. Col. Edward Aritonang said that the threats were allegedly made by parties intent on sowing the seeds of unrest among Jakarta's population.

"The threats were the work of those who want to see people panic. Ultimately, these people want to spark unrest," he said.

South Jakarta Police chief Lt. Col. Satrya Hadi Prasetya said that police could face difficulty tracing the callers, even if they installed bugging devices in private and public telephones.

"Although we can identify phone numbers, it's difficult to find people because calls of this nature are usually made from public telephones," he said. (ivy/emf/bsr)