Suicide bomb hits Mass in Indonesia; 20 wounded
Attackers allegedly tied to Islamic State
MAKASSAR, Indonesia — Two attackers believed to be members of a militant network that pledged allegiance to the Islamic State group blew themselves up outside a packed Roman Catholic cathedral during a Palm Sunday Mass on Indonesia’s Sulawesi island, wounding at least 20 people, police said.
Rev. Wilhelmus Tulak, a priest at the Sacred Heart of Jesus Cathedral in Makassar, said he had just finished celebrating Palm Sunday Mass when a bang shocked his congregation. He said the blast went off about 10:30 a.m. as a first batch of churchgoers was walking out of the church and another group was coming in.
He said that security guards at the church were suspicious of two men on a motorcycle who wanted to enter the building and that when they went to confront them, one of the men detonated his explosives.
Police later said that both attackers were killed instantly and that evidence collected at the scene indicated one of the two was a woman. The wounded included four guards and several churchgoers, police said.
National Police Chief Gen. Listyo Sigit Prabowo told reporters when he visited the crime scene late Sunday that the two attackers are believed to have been members of the militant group Jemaah Anshorut Daulah, which has pledged allegiance to Islamic State group and was responsible for suicide bombings on Indonesian churches in 2018.
He said one of the attackers was believed to have links to a church bombing in the Philippines.
The attack a week before Easter in the world’s most populous Muslim-majority nation came as the country was on high alert after December’s arrest of the leader of the Southeast Asian militant group Jemaah Islamiyah, which has been designated a terror group by many nations.
Indonesia 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 in recent years by smaller, less deadly strikes targeting the government, police and anti-terrorism forces and people militants consider infidels.
Police have identified one of Sunday’s attackers only by his initial, L, who they believe was connected to a 2019 suicide attack that killed 23 people at Our Lady of Mount Carmel Cathedral in the Philippine province of Sulu, Prabowo said.
He said the two attackers were linked to a group of suspected militants arrested in Makassar on Jan. 6, when a police counterterrorism squad shot and killed two suspected militants and arrested 19 others.