Indonesia police: bomb attacks have JI hallmark

By Sunanda Creagh and Ed Davies

JAKARTA (Reuters) - Indonesian police said on Sunday that deadly attacks on two Jakarta hotels used the same methods and equipment as previous bombings by the militant Jemaah Islamiah group.

Investigators were working to reconstruct the face of one of the suspected suicide bombers from Friday's attacks on the JW Marriott and Ritz-Carlton that killed nine people and wounded 53.

The two hotels were popular with foreign business executives and diplomats and considered to be among the most secure buildings in the capital.

The blasts left some bodies so badly mutilated they were difficult to identify and two decapitated corpses were believed by police to belong to the suicide bombers.

"We are trying to reconstruct the face of one of the heads we found to see if it matches the guest from 1808. We will ask witnesses and receptionists, is it him?" police spokesman Nanan Soekarna told a news conference.

Police said the bombers had checked in to the Marriott as paying guests on Wednesday and had assembled the bombs in their room. A third bomb was found and defused in a laptop computer bag in room 1808.

Soekarna said the attacks bore the hallmarks of Jemaah Islamiah (JI), the radical militant Islamist group responsible for a string of deadly attacks in Jakarta and on the resort island of Bali that seemed to end in 2005.

"Of course they are from the same school as Jemaah Islamiah," he said.