Australia’s Embassy Bombing

Terrorists struck at Australia’s embassy in Jakarta, September 9, 2004, exploding a powerful car bomb which killed 11 people and wounded more than 160. Australian embassy staff escaped relatively unscathed in the suspected suicide attack, which ripped apart the heavily-fortified gates of the mission, shattered thousands of windows and left a deep crater in the road outside. The massive blast, heard up to 15km away, tore the glass fronts off nearby office towers and showered flying glass into the embassy building, causing minor injuries among mission staff. Suspicions fell immediately on Malaysian Azahari Husin, one of Asia’s most wanted men and a member of the al-Qaeda-linked Jemaah Islamiah terror group, who has been linked to numerous bombings including the Bali attack that killed 202 people in 2002.