The busy road to Ciledug, 25 miles south of Jakarta is a long commercial strip, lined on each side with banks, shops, small office blocks, restaurants, car showrooms, storage yards and a few houses, writes Conor O'Clery.
Driving along it one comes to appreciate the full horror of the destructive forces unleashed in the riots on Thursday and Friday. For mile after mile there are smashed windows, burned out shops, wrecked mini-malls and looted banks. Occasionally a blackened square of concrete marks the former home of an ethnic Chinese family. In one short stretch I counted 16 burned out cars and mini-vans lying on their side. The worst devastation is at Ciledug where a long street of wrecked buildings faces a five-story shopping mall.
Nothing prepares the visitor for the horror of the recently-built mall, where 300 looters were trapped by a fire on the fourth floor on Friday evening. Some 113 charred corpses were found there on Saturday and another nine yesterday. Seven people were killed jumping from the upper floors. Locals said the mall was in darkness when rioters broke in on Friday evening, and began to set fires. They repeatedly rushed in and out taking goods and clothing as if possessed, despite warnings from onlookers, said witnesses.
Altogether 499 people were killed in the week's violence in Jakarta, mostly in infernos at four malls, the army said on Saturday. The death toll is expected to rise.