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 It took security forces about three hours to end the siege near a
Starbucks cafe and Sarinah's, Jakarta's oldest department store,
after a team of around seven militants traded gunfire with police
and blew themselves up.
A police officer and a Canadian man were killed in the attack, which
- with the attackers - took the death toll to seven. Seventeen
people, including a Dutch man, were wounded.
Two of the militants were taken alive, police said.
"Islamic State fighters carried out an armed attack this morning
targeting foreign nationals and the security forces charged with
protecting them in the Indonesian capital," Aamaaq news agency,
which is allied to the group, said on its Telegram channel.
Jakarta's police chief told reporters: "ISIS is behind this attack
definitely," using a common acronym for Islamic State, and he named
an Indonesian militant called Bahrun Naim as the man responsible for
plotting it.
The drama played out on the streets and on television screens, with
at least six explosions and a gunfight in a movie theater.
 ARMORED CARS, HELICOPTERS
"The Starbucks cafe windows are blown out. I see three dead people
on the road. There has been a lull in the shooting but someone is on
the roof of the building and police are aiming their guns at him,"
Reuters photographer Darren Whiteside said as the attack unfolded.
Police responded in force within minutes. Black armored cars
screeched to a halt in front of the Starbucks and sniper teams were
deployed around the neighborhood as helicopters buzzed overhead.
After the militants had been overcome, a body still lay on the
street, a shoe nearby among the debris. The city center's
notoriously jammed roads were largely deserted.
Indonesia has seen attacks by Islamist militants before, but a
coordinated assault by a team of suicide bombers and gunmen is
unprecedented and has echoes of the sieges seen in Mumbai seven
years ago and in Paris last November.
The last major militant attacks in Jakarta were in July 2009, with
bombs at the JW Marriott and Ritz Carlton hotels.
The country had been on edge for weeks over the threat posed by
Islamist militants. Counter-terrorism police had rounded up about 20
people with suspected links to Islamic State, whose battle lines in
Syria and Iraq have included nationals from several Asian countries.
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HISTORY OF ATTACKS
Indonesia has the world's largest Muslim population, the vast
majority of whom practise a moderate form of the religion.
The country saw a spate of militant attacks in the 2000s, the
deadliest of which was a nightclub bombing on the holiday island of
Bali that killed 202 people, most of them tourists.
Police have been largely successful in destroying domestic militant
cells since then, but officials have more recently been worrying
about a resurgence inspired by groups such as Islamic State and
Indonesians who return after fighting with the group.
Alarm around the world over the danger stemming from Islamic State
rocketed after the Paris attacks and the killing of 14 people in
California in December.
On Tuesday, a Syrian suicide bomber killed 10 German tourists in
Istanbul. Authorities there suspect the bomber had links to Islamic
State.
Among those arrested in Indonesia's crackdown late last year was a
member of China's Uighur Muslim minority with a suicide-bomb vest.
Media said two other Uighur suspects were on the run.
Indonesian security forces have also intensified a manhunt for a
militant leader called Santoso, regarded as Indonesia's most
high-profile backer of Islamic State, in the jungles of Sulawesi
island. Santoso had threatened to unleash attacks in Jakarta.
(Aditional reporting by Fergus Jensen, Gayatri Suroyo, Nilufar
Rizki, Eveline Danubrata, Randy Fabi and Fransiska Nangoy; Writing
by John Chalmers; Editing by Nick Macfie)
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