Luxury hotels now terrorist target of choice

In an assessment of the Jakarta hotel bombings last week, U.S. intelligence group Stratfor said that by striking a hotel, militants could make the same type of statement against western decadence and imperialism as they could by hitting an embassy.

    Stratfor compared terrorist group Jemaah Islamiah's (JI) 2003 and 2004 attacks using large car bombs which killed 22 people, just one of them a foreigner, to the attacks in Bali in 2005 using three small suicide bombs to kill 23, including five foreigners.

    In the hotel attacks last week, two JI suicide bombers killed nine including themselves and six foreigners.

     Stratfor said militants had attacked hotels in India, Egypt, Pakistan, Afghanistan and Jordan as well as Jakarta where luxury hotels were full of western businessmen, officials and well-off locals, making them a target-rich environment.

    Although hotel security had improved substantially, particularly in higher risk locations, it still lagged behind embassies, Stratfor noted, Kazinform cites Xinhua. See www.chinaview.cn for full version.