Suicide attack on Catholic cathedral in Indonesia injures at least 20 people

A suicide bomber blew himself up outside a packed Roman Catholic cathedral on Indonesia’s Sulawesi island during a Palm Sunday Mass, wounding at least 20 people, police said.

A video obtained by the Associated Press showed a burning motorbike at the gates of the Sacred Heart of Jesus Cathedral in Makassar, the capital of South Sulawesi province.

The attack came as Indonesia was on high alert following the arrest in December of Aris Sumarsono, known as Zulkarnaen, the leader of Jemaah Islamiyah – it is a banned Islamist extremist organisation seeking to establish an Islamic caliphate extending across South-east Asia.

Wilhelmus Tulak, a Catholic priest who had been leading the Mass when the bomb exploded at about 10:30am, said a loud bang shocked his congregation, who had just finished the Sunday service marking the beginning of the Holy Week before Easter.

The first congregation were walking out of the church while another group was coming in when the blast happened, he said.

He said security guards had suspected two motorists who wanted to enter the church and confronted them. One then detonated his explosives and died near the gate. The injured included four guards and several churchgoers.

National Police spokesman Argo Yuwono, speaking in the capital, Jakarta, said that police are still trying to identify two attackers on a motorbike.

He said officers are investigating whether they were linked to a local affiliate of the Jemaah Islamiyah network.

“There were two people riding on a motorbike when the explosion happened at the main gate of the church – the perpetrators were trying to enter the compound,” he said.

Around 64 suspects were detained by Indonesia’s counter-terrorism squad, known as Densus 88, in several provinces last month. The arrests followed a tipoff about possible attacks against police and places of worship.

Indonesia, the world’s most populous Muslim-majority nation, has been battling militants since bombings on the resort island of Bali in 2002 killed 202 people, mostly foreign tourists.

Attacks aimed at foreigners have been largely replaced by smaller, less deadly strikes targeting the government, police and anti-terrorism forces and people militants consider as infidels.

A court banned Jemaah Islamiyah in 2008, and the group was weakened by a sustained crackdown. A new threat has emerged in recent years inspired by the Islamic State group’s attacks abroad.

The country’s last major attack was in May 2018, when two families carried out suicide bombings in the secondlargest city of Surabaya, killing a dozen people including two young girls whose parents had involved them in one of the attacks.

Police said the father was the leader of a local affiliate of the Islamic State group known as Jemaah Anshorut Daulah.