Indonesian police release sketches of bomb suspects

Indonesian police spokesman Nanan Soekarna holds sketches of two Indonesian men they suspect were the suicide bombers in Jakarta, July 22, 2009. Indonesia on Wednesday released sketches of the faces of two Indonesian men they suspect were the suicide bombers in near-simultaneous attacks on two luxury hotels in Jakarta.

JAKARTA (Reuters) - Indonesian police Wednesday released sketches of the faces of two Indonesian men they suspect were the suicide bombers in near-simultaneous attacks on two luxury hotels in Jakarta.

Friday's attacks at the JW Marriott and Ritz-Carlton killed nine people and wounded 53, including foreigners and Indonesians. The sketches are based on two heads found at bomb sites. "We believe these were the suicide bombers," Indonesian police spokesman Nanan Soekarna said as he held up the sketches at a press briefing.

One shows a chubby-faced, dark-skinned man, who police said was between 20 and 40 and was about 165 cm tall, with short, straight black hair. His remains were found at the Ritz-Carlton.

The second suspect, found at the Marriott, had a thinner, more oval-shaped face, was lighter-skinned and had short, straight black hair. Police said he was about 180 cm tall and initially said he was between 20 and 25 years old, but later changed that to between 16 and 25 years old.

Police and security analysts said that 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, or of a splinter group headed by Malaysian-born militant Noordin Top.

Local media reported that police questioned Top's wife in Central Java Wednesday. Police spokesmen declined to comment because they said they did not want to jeopardize the investigation.

Top, among the most-wanted JI operatives, remains on the run and may have been the mastermind behind the attacks, police said.

But the identities of the two suicide bombers and their accomplices remain unclear. Police took DNA samples from the families of two suspects but said Wednesday that they did not match the DNA of the suicide bombers.

One suspected suicide bomber was named by local media as Nurhasbi, who has school links to members of Jemaah Islamiah. The other suspect was named as Ibrahim, a florist at the Ritz Carlton. Neither man has been contactable since the attacks, according to local media quoting family members.

The bombers checked in to the Marriott as paying guests on July 15 and assembled the bombs in room on the 18th floor, according to police. A third bomb, found in a laptop computer bag, was defused.

A police source has said that one theory the police are working on is that the bombers planned to detonate the bomb on the 18th floor first, sending panicking guests rushing down to the lobby where one of the suicide bombers would detonate a second bomb, potentially killing and injuring many more guests.

(Reporting by Telly Nathalia and Olivia Rondonuwu; Editing by Sara Webb and Jeremy Laurence)