Six people died in civil unrest that gripped parts of Jakarta on Tuesday night after the election commission confirmed that President Joko Widodo won last month’s election, the governor of the Indonesian capital said.
Protests on Tuesday by supporters of Widodo’s challenger for the presidency, former general Prabowo Subianto, started peacefully but turned violent in the evening, forcing police to fire tear gas to disperse the crowd.
“As per 9 o’clock this morning, there were 200 people hurt being brought to five hospitals,” Governor Anies Baswedan told broadcaster TVOne. “The number of people dead was six.”
He said hospitals were conducting post-mortems to determine the cause of the deaths.
Hundreds of protesters were still locked in a tense stand-off with police in central Jakarta on Wednesday after a night of violence. Television footage showed smoke billowing from behind dozens of protesters in streets of the Tanah Abang district, with some throwing firecrackers and tearing down public fences.