Grenade sparks alert at Jakarta Hilton hotel

The discovery of the grenade by a gardener working in the hotel's grounds sparked a major alert, but police a spokesman later said tests on the device revealed it was badly corroded and probably inactive.

Security has been tightened at Indonesia's three Hiltons after the Australian government last week said it had credible intelligence militants were planning an imminent strike, possibly targeting a branch of the hotel.

The world's largest Muslim-populated country has suffered a series of attacks blamed on Islamic extremists in the past few years, the deadliest being the October 2002 Bali bombings which killed 202 people, 88 of them Australian.

Jakarta's Marriott hotel was hit by a suicide bomb attack in August 2003 in which 12 people were killed. On September 9 this year another explosion killed 11 people outside the Australian embassy in the city.