A Perth businessman, Nathan Verity, is believed to be one of two Australians killed in the Jakarta hotel terrorists bombings. Australian trade official Craig Senger is also feared dead. Prime Minister Kevin Rudd said in a press conference that he held "grave concerns" for three Australians.


THE bomb blasts that rocked two luxurious hotels in Jakarta this morning are bound to reverberate through the Asean summit and inevitably bring intense security across Phuket.

All resorts on the island are now likely to be subjected to checks because of the blasts, Phuket's chief of police said today.

''We have contingency plans to take security to all resorts on the island,'' Police Major General Pekad Tantipong said. ''Those plans may well be put into action now.''

Major General Pekad will be waiting to hear what action is planned. But security, so far confined to the north of the island, is now likely to extend across the south, too.

Phuket is now in the hands of the Thai Army, under the Internal Security Act that was imposed to cover next week's series of regional security meetings.

The Marriott and the Ritz-Carlton in the Indonesian capital were rocked by twin blasts about 8am this morning.

Television footage showed the facade of one of the hotels had been torn off, with foreigners among the nine reported dead and 50 wounded.

Delegates to the big Asean conference on Phuket will be staying at the JW Marriott on Phuket.

Indeed, it could even be the place where US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is to be a guest. She will be bringing her own security team, and her hotel destination remains secret.

As many as 14,000 military are likely to be deployed to ensure the protection of Phuket from protest demonstrations of the kind that turned the last Asean summit in Thailand in April into a security farce.

But the new concern is terrorist action.

Phuketwan found security quite subtle on a journey late yesterday from Phuket City to the Sheraton Grande Laguna Phuket resort, where most of next week's meetings will take place.

The presence of the military was understated. Parade drills involving large groups of men have so far been restricted to official greetings of generals and VIPs at the airport.

But we took the main road from Phuket City and turned left at the Heroines' Monument, and we, like most people on the road, had a vehicle pass sticker.

People who headed to the island's north yesterday from Patong along the coast road without a sticker told a different story.

One group was stopped four times at checkpoints, the most thorough at Kalim, where mirrors were used to viuew the underside of their vehicle.

Indonesian Foreign Minister Dr N. Hassan Wirajuda was due to arrive on Phuket tomorrow evening.

He was expected to lead the planned adoption of a human rights code by members of Asean that would overlap with the modern-day need to control large-scale movements of people.

Indonesia, where presidential elections recently concluded, is one of Southeast Asia's most stable democracies.

But terrorist attacks by Islamic radicals have continued since the Bali bombings of 2002, when scores of tourists died.