Fresh explosions heard hours after IS-linked terror attack in Jakarta

Jakarta: A fresh round of explosions were heard in Indonesia's central Jakarta on Thursday, near the area where a deadly gun and bomb assault by militants took place just hours earlier.

Earlier in the evening, the Islamic State-linked suicide attackers struck at the heart of the capital of Muslim-majority Indonesia, executing a Westerner and killing a local while blowing up a Starbucks cafe, leaving five attackers dead in the ensuing firing.

Five extremists launched an assault copying "the pattern of the Paris attacks" as they detonated explosives and shot at people in a district packed with malls, embassies and United Nations offices.

The assault also left an Indonesian man dead and 19 other people injured, and a police post destroyed, in what the country's president dubbed "acts of terror".

"There is a strong suspicion that this is an ISIS-linked group in Indonesia," national police spokesman Anton Charliyan said, referring to the Islamic State group by an alternative name.

"From what we see today, this group is following the pattern of the Paris attacks. The five-strong cell who struck today included three suicide bombers who initially targeted a Starbucks opposite a major shopping mall," he said.

In November last year, IS gunmen killed 130 people in a series of coordinated attacks on the French capital in November.

After the first explosion, two men armed with pistols took two men hostage. He identified them as an Algerian and a Dutch national, however Jakarta police chief Tito Karnavian said the second man was Canadian.

Charliyan said the Algerian managed to escape with bullet wounds, but the second man was shot dead on the spot and that an Indonesian man who had tried to help the hostages was also shot and killed.

Meanwhile, Prime Minister Narendra Modi condemned the "reprehensible" terror attack in Jakarta and said his thoughts are with those who lost their loved ones.

"My thoughts are with those who lost their loved ones in the reprehensible attack in Jakarta. I pray for speedy recovery of the injured," he said.