Police officers inspect the damage at the Marriott hotel after a bomb went off Friday in Jakarta, Indonesia. (Dita Alangkara/Associated Press)Powerful bomb blasts rocked two upscale hotels in the Indonesian capital, Jakarta, on Friday morning, killing at least nine people and wounding 50, a government official said.

The Jakarta Post reported that wounded foreigners included one Canadian.

A New Zealander was among the dead, while 13 other foreigners were injured in nearly simultaneous blasts at the Ritz-Carlton and the nearby Marriott, said Indonesian Security Minister Widodo Adi Sucipto.

A policeman walks in front of the damaged Ritz-Carlton hotel on Friday after an explosion in Jakarta. (Dadang Tri/Reuters)He told reporters the blasts were caused by "high explosives," but did not elaborate.

The Jakarta Post reported that a man identified as a Canadian suffered serious burns to 30 per cent of his body, but that report could not be confirmed.

Officials at the Foreign Affairs Department in Ottawa could not be reached for comment and calls to the Canadian Embassy in Jakarta were referred to Ottawa.

Television footage showed dozens of police and security guards stepping over broken glass as they cordoned off the Ritz, which had its facade destroyed in the attack.

A witness said the explosions happened within five minutes of each other around 7:30 a.m. local time.

"There were bodies on the ground, one of them had no stomach," said a man who lives near the hotels and arrived at the Marriott before emergency services.

"It was terrible."

There were no immediate claims of responsibility for the blasts.

The country held an election last week, in which incumbent President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono was declared the winner. Despite allegations of electoral fraud by Yudhoyono's opponents, independent observers declared the election largely free and fair.

Jemaah Islamiyah, a militant Islamic organization, has been blamed for a series of attacks between 2002 and 2005 that killed more than 240 people, most of them foreign tourists on the island of Bali.

The group was blamed for a previous blast at the Jakarta Marriott in 2003 that killed 12 people.

With files from The Associated Press & The Canadian Press