US, AUSTRALIA OFFER ASSISTANCE FOR BOMBINGS' PROBE

Jakarta, July 24 (ANTARA) - The governments of the United States and Australia have offered assistance for the investigation into last week's bombings of the JW Marriott and Ritz Carlton hotels, a foreign ministry spokesman said.

Foreign Ministry Spokesman Teuku Faizasyah said here on Friday that the governments of the two countries had conveyed their offer officially to the Indonesian government.

"We have received the offers and passed them on to the National Police which have to decide," the foreign ministry said when questioned about the matter.

He said the United States would provide data, including DNA data on members of international terrorist networks. In the meantime, the Australian government had offered expertise in the identification of CCTV records.

In this case, the CCTV records were badly needed to help reveal the perpetrators of the bombings of the two top hotels in the capital city which took place on Friday (July 17, 2009) last last week.

The two bomb blasts which occurred almost simultaneously on the morning of Friday, July 17 killed nine people and injured 53 others. Most of the dead victims were foreigners.

Tens of people who were injured had to be given medical treatment in a number of hospitals such as the Jakarta Hospital, the Metropolitan Medical Center (MMC) and the Pertamina hospital.

Following the bomb attacks, a number of countries were reported to have issued a travel warning such as Australia and the United States.

The faces of two men suspected to have conducted last Friday's bombings in the JW Marriott and Ritz-Carlton hotels were shown to the public in police-made sketches here Wednesday.

The sketches were distributed to the media at a press conference given by Inspector General Nanan Sukarna, the National Police Headquarters' chief spokesman, and Brigadier General Eddy Suparwoko, head of the National Police's Dental and Health Center.