‘ One family’ behind attacks on churches
> 13 dead, 40 hurt in Surabaya blasts
JAKARTA: A family of six launched suicide attacks on Christians attending Sunday services at three churches in Indonesia’s second-largest city of Surabaya, killing at least 13 people and wounding 40, officials said.
Police said the family who carried out yesterday’s attacks were among 500 Islamic State (IS) sympathisers who had returned from Syria.
“The husband drove the car that contained explosives and rammed it into the gate in front of that church,” East Java police spokesman Frans Barung Mangera said at the regional police headquarters in Surabaya.
The wife and two daughters were involved in an attack on a second church and at the third church “two other children rode a motorbike and had the bomb across their laps”, he said.
The two daughters were aged 12 and nine while the other two, thought to be the man’s sons, were 18 and 16, police said.
They blamed the bombings on the IS-inspired Jemaah Ansharut Daulah.
IS claimed responsibility for the attacks, in a message carried on its Amaq news agency.
“This act is barbaric and beyond the limits of humanity, causing victims among members of society, the police and even innocent children,” President Joko Widodo said.
Mangera said the attacks had killed at least 13 people and 40 had been taken to hospital, including two police officers.
Streets around the bombed churches were blocked by checkpoints and heavily armed police stood guard as forensic and bomb squad officers combed the area for clues.
TV footage showed one church where the yard in front appeared engulfed in fire, with thick, black smoke billowing up.
The attacks come days after militant prisoners killed five members of an elite counterterrorism force during a 36hour standoff at a high security jail on the outskirts of Jakarta.
The church attacks were likely linked to the prison hostage standoff, said Wawan Purwanto, communication director at Indonesia’s intelligence agency.
“The main target is still security authorities, but we can say that there are alternative (targets) if the main targets are blocked,” he said.
At St Mary’s Catholic Church, the first place of worship to be attacked, the bombing happened after an earlier mass was over and when the church was getting ready to hold another service.
A witness interviewed by CNN Indonesia said shortly before the explosion he saw a person on a motorbike drive in carrying a cardboard box.
Separately, an internal police report reviewed by Reuters said a suspected bomb exploded in a car in the parking lot of a Pentecostal church, setting alight dozens of motorbikes.
In the third location, the Indonesian Christian Church, veiled women entered the church’s yard where they were stopped by a security guard before an explosion occurred at the same spot. – Reuters