Supri, July 18: The first thing that Canadian businessman Andrew Cobham remembers about the Jakarta bomb attack he survived on Friday was a booming sound and a bright, white, light.
“There was a loud bang, a bright flash and suddenly you couldn’t see anything or anybody. The whole place was in turmoil,” Cobham told Reuters on Saturday in a bedside interview at South Jakarta’s Metropolitan Medical Centre.
Cobham, 65, an adviser to the consulting firm CastleAsia, was attending a regular business breakfast hosted by the company in the lobby of the luxury JW Marriott on Friday morning when a suicide bomber struck.
It was followed by another suicide bomb at the nearby Ritz-Carlton Hotel, which is also in Jakarta’s main business district.
Police said on Saturday that eight people had died in the attack — including the two suicide bombers — and at least 53 were injured.
SUSPICION
Suspicion has fallen on a splinter group of the militant Islamic group Jemaah Islamiah as likely perpetrators.
The CastleAsia breakfast, an off-the-record get-together, was attended by several mining and energy executives including New Zealander Tim Mackay, chief executive of cement firm Holcim Indonesia, who was killed, his company said.
Cobham, who has lived in Indonesia for about 20 years, said the white light was accompanied by a blast so loud it has destroyed his hearing in his right ear.
In the chaotic five minutes that followed, as the room filled with smoke and ash, Cobham thought he was going to die.
“My first thought was that I actually didn’t think I was going to survive, and then I thought I was blind because I couldn’t see anything or anybody,” he said.
“I knew I couldn’t hear; I have lost my ear on this side,” he said, touching the right side of his head, which was marked with long scabs, cuts and a black eye.
With a broken foot and painful shrapnel in his side, Cobham tried to walk toward the hotel windows that had been blown out.
It was too dark to see the blood and injuries sustained by his colleagues, but Cobham remembers very clearly the expression on one friend’s face.
“When you look at people who are dazed or totally shocked out of it, they have a look. He had a look that said: ‘Please help me, please help me’,” said Cobham.
—-Agencies