Bomb ‘was to punish Australia’

AN Islamic militant group yesterday claimed that a deadly truck bomb attack outside the Australian Embassy in Indonesia was a punishment for Australian support for the war in Iraq.

An internet statement in the name of Jemaah Islamiyah, a Southeast Asian terror group linked to al-Qaida, also claimed responsibility for Thursday’s attack which killed nine people and wounded 173.

Indonesian investigators, meanwhile, said that they believed the bombing was a suicide attack, and were investigating if two of the nine people who died were the bombers.