The attack on the Australian embassy in Jakarta has killed at least 8 and wounded more than 130 people: Jakarta Embassy Blast Kills Eight, Wounds 130.

JAKARTA (Reuters) - A powerful car bomb exploded outside the Australian embassy in Jakarta on Thursday, killing at least eight people and wounding more than 130 in an attack Indonesian police blamed on al Qaeda-linked militants.

The blast came days ahead of presidential polls in the world’s most populous Muslim nation and exactly a month before Australia’s general election. It blew a large hole in the embassy’s fence and left a deep crater in the road outside.

Charred debris, bodies and body parts, glass and the twisted wreckage of motorcycles, cars and a truck littered the road outside the embassy after the blast, which tore off the glass fronts of nearby office towers, wounding many office workers.

Australian Prime Minister John Howard expressed outrage.

“This is not a nation that is going to be intimidated by acts of terrorism,” he told reporters in Melbourne.

His foreign minister, Alexander Downer, who was flying to Jakarta late on Thursday along with a team of bomb experts, put the death toll at 11, all of them Indonesians.