Two Canadians injured in Friday's bomb attacks at hotels in Jakarta, Indonesia, are recovering from their injuries, says a Canadian MP who was able to visit with them.
Conservative MP Deepak Obhrai, who represents the riding of Calgary East, visited Edward Thiessen and Andrew Cobham at their separate hospitals over the weekend.
"They are doing fine," Obhrai told CTV's Canada AM on Monday, in a phone interview from Jakarta.
"Mr. Thiessen has been moved to Singapore for treatment of his burn injuries. Mr. Cobham is being treated here and we expect him to be released in a day or two, but we expect he will also require further treatment in Singapore for his hearing loss."
Thiessen, who is the Indonesian president of the French power generation and rail transportation company Alstom, was on the ground floor of the JW Marriott at the time of the explosion. He suffered first-degree burns to his face, and second-degree burns on his hand and leg, along with some cuts and scrapes.
Andrew Cobham, the vice-president of the Indonesian-Canadian Chamber of Commerce who had moved to Asia in the early 1990s, was injured in the same hotel lobby during a business breakfast for foreign nationals who work in the oil and gas sector.
Obhrai says he was in Indonesia on government business, as parliamentary secretary to the minister of foreign affairs, and had taken a few days off to visit family when he got a call from the Canadian embassy that two hotels, the Marriott, and the Ritz-Carlton next door, had been bombed. The blasts killed nine people and injured another 50.
Obhrai says he was stunned by the twin suicide bombings, since Indonesia had been enjoying four years of relative calm since its last serious terrorist attack.
"Everyone was n a state of shock, including myself, considering that Indonesia had just gone through a peaceful election process, and they were having success in the fight against terrorism," he said, referring to President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono's re-election earlier this month. That electoral victory is said to have been achieved partly on the strength of government efforts to fight terrorism.
"Nevertheless, this happened. It was a shock to everyone," Obhrai said.
After Obhrai assured the injured Canadians that they could expect the full co-operation and assistance of the government of Canada, he met with Indonesia's finance minister, Sri Mulyani Indrawati, and expressed the government's condolences and sympathy.
Obhrai said Canadians in Jakarta are now being advised to remain indoors and to avoid terrorist targets, including malls and hotels.
"At this current time, we are telling Canadians to be very cautious, to not go to places that could most likely be targets. There was a bomb tried at a shopping centre. So they have to take normal precautions," he said, adding: "But Indonesians are very resilient and want life to go back to normal."
Jakarata police are continuing to piece together bomb fragments and other clues gathered from the bomb sites.
Police have said explosive material recovered at the hotels is "identical" to that used by the Southeast Asian terrorist network Jemaah Islamiyah in earlier attacks.
Jemaah Islamiyah rose to prominence from the 2002 nightclub bombings on the beach resort of Bali that killed 202 people, most of them foreigners.
It staged attacks in Indonesia in each of the next three years: a 2003 car bombing outside the J.W. Marriott, a 2004 truck bombing outside the Australian Embassy, and triple suicide bombings on Bali restaurants by attackers carrying bombs in backpacks in 2005.
Police say an unexploded bomb left this time in a room of the Marriott resembled devices used in attacks on Bali and one found in a recent raid against the network on an Islamic boarding school in Central Java.
Anti-terrorism police are now hunting for Noordin Mohammad Top, a fugitive Malaysian who heads a particularly violent offshoot of the network and has been linked to four major strikes in Indonesia since 2002.
The official Antara news agency said Sunday that the government was intensifying efforts to find Noordin and trace the network's finances to try to uncover any links to Friday's blasts.
With reports from The Associated Press
