11 September 2004	Saturday	25 Rajab 1425

JAKARTA, Sept 10: Indonesian police launched a nation wide manhunt on Friday for Al Qaeda-linked militants blamed for a suicide car bomb attack outside the Australian embassy that jolted both countries before elections.

Australian Prime Minister John Howard said intelligence agencies had warned that those responsible for the attack in Jakarta on Thursday could strike again. "The information they have available indicates that the number of operatives ... is sufficiently large to support the fear that there could be another attack," Mr Howard told reporters in Canberra.

Indonesian police have blamed Jemaah Islamiah, a militant group seen as the regional arm of Al Qaeda, for the embassy attack, which killed nine people and wounded 182. Most of the victims were Indonesian.

At least one suicide bomber stopped a mini-van packed with explosives outside the embassy, where it detonated, police said. Thursday's bombing underlined the vulnerability of the world's most populous Muslim nation to militant violence.

It came days before Indonesia's presidential run-off, two days before the third anniversary of the Sept 11 attacks in the United States and a month before Australia's general election.

Jemaah Islamiah is suspected to have been behind the Bali bombings in 2002 that killed 202 people and also an attack on the J.W. Marriott Hotel in Jakarta last year that killed 12.

It appeared to admit responsibility for the embassy attack in an Internet statement that could not immediately be authenticated. The statement warned of more attacks unless Australia withdrew its forces from Iraq.

ELECTION BATTLES: Mr Howard, a strong ally of Washington, has said Australia's 850 troops in and around Iraq would stay until the job was done. Opposition leader Mark Latham wants to bring them home by Christmas. They are in a tight race for the Oct 9 election.

Indonesian President Megawati Sukarnoputri has at times come under fire for not being tough enough with militants, although she did cut short a foreign trip to visit the bomb site. She faces off against Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, her former chief security minister, in a presidential run-off on Sept 20. -Reuters