a gunfight. bombs. explosions happening at the center of town. and we know also, we re getting a clearer picture as well. we spoke to an eyewitness who saw two men, apparently, approach a police earlier, and then the explosions happened. apparently the first explosion happened in the starbucks cafe across the street from the police post, and then the grenades and then the gunfight. that s what we re hearing, the targets, starbucks, the police station, a shopping center. four suspects doing all of that. very coordinated, it appears, but the police moved fast to bring it to a quick end. what s astonishing here considering what s happened is there are few casualties when you eliminate the suspects involved. reporter: that s right, rosemary. fortunately the numbers are very
probably the safest place and not to be on the street at moment. christian, thank you for being with us. thank you for describing the scene and what you have heard over the last couple of hours. one of many people now who are in a lock down situation in downtown jakarta. a very busy area. right in the central downtown where there s luxury hotels. the u.n. headquarters also on lockdown. we also have this word coming to us from the u.s. embassy keling citizens to shelter in place, not to leave. similar advice being put out to the australian citizens in jakarta as well. i imagine a lot of other embassies are putting out a similar advice to their nationals in indonesia s capital right now. we are closely watching the situation involving the skyline building. police have entered a short time ago in pursuit of a gunman,
taken out of the site to a police hospital. and kathy, let s rewind a bit and detail how all of this unfolded. you are in central jakarta, a busy intersection next to this mall. explain why this would be a prime target for any terror group. well, errol, this is a very busy intersection. you have commercial establishments, star bucks, mcdonald s across the street. you have offices that house the u.n. this is a street that s busy any time of the day, particularly during the lunch hour where people are walking past, traffic is also quite heavy in this area. this would be a prime target for terrorists, and it is not a surprise that they picked this one. also, there was a police outpost
i left the skyline. what we saw was the starbucks cafe with all the windows blown out. there was a ro rt that there was a gun fight that happened there after grenades were thrown at the police station across the street. the aftermath of that, seeing starbucks now and that s probably why, as we reported earlier, heavily armed men entered the building where the starbucks coffee shop was. it took a while, but then as i left the build, i saw them coming out and the police cordoning off. it s still unclear, though, what really transpired and who s behind it and what happened to the armed suspects who reportedly escaped after the gun
you mention those numbers on wall street in correction territory. from late last year. more than 10%. yes, the markets in asia did crawl off their lows for the day. of at one point, japan was down 4%, which is a very, very big move for the nikkei. shanghai, nikkei in tokyo, all down by a long way from the start of this year. the zip, just to give you some sort of context down by 7.5% as well. it s been a tough start to the year. the plunging oil price, oil in asia continuing to fall. stabilize just in the last hour or so. around about the $30 barrel mark. and also what s going on in the chinese economy, how week sit. and what does that mean for the