Now Indonesia police headquarters come under suicide attack

International Desk: Police say a family riding two motorbikes was behind another suicide attack that injured four officers and six civilians in Indonesia's second-largest city of Surabaya.

The two motorbikes pull up alongside a car and four officers manning a security post at the entrance to the city's police headquarters before at least one explosion. At the moment of the explosion, two civilians appear to be walking into the checkpoint just metres from the motorbikes.

Three of the officers at the checkpoint are standing right by the motorbikes when the detonation happens.

Indonesia's police chief said the attack was carried out by a family of five that included an eight-year-old child. The young girl survived and is now recovering, he said. The fate of other family members is unknown.

Police suspect the new attacks are also by extremists linked to the Jemaah Ansurat Daulah group.

"Clearly it's a suicide bombing," East Java police spokesman Frans Barung Mangera told a media briefing.

"We can't be open [about] all details yet because we are still identifying victims at the scene and the crime scene is being handled."

He said the full extent of casualties was unclear.

Indonesian President Joko Widodo said the series of suicide attacks in Surabaya was the "act of cowards" and pledged to push through a new anti-terrorism bill to combat networks of Islamist militants in the country.

He said he would issue a regulation in lieu of a law next month to force through a new anti-terrorism bill if Parliament failed to pass it.

Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull described the attacks as shocking and cowardly, and said he had written to Mr Widodo expressing Australia's heartfelt sympathy.

"The brutality, the barbarity, the inhumanity, the blasphemy of these terrorists strains our ability to believe it but it's there," Mr Turnbull said.

"They are threatening civilised nations, they're threatening civilised ways of life. They're threatening people's harmony and religion. They are debasing and defaming Islam, as President Widodo has often said."

There was another attack on a different police station in the city last night, about 12 hours after 14 people — including six suicide bombers — were killed in three separate attacks on Surabaya churches.

Members of one family were responsible for the church attacks, including a mother and two young girls wearing suicide belts.

The first attack, at the Santa Maria Roman Catholic Church, killed four people, including one or more bombers, a police spokesman said.

Minutes after the first, there was a second explosion at the Christian Church of Diponegoro that killed two people.

Another two people died in a third attack at the city's Pantekosta Church, the police spokesman said.

Indonesia's chief security minister said police backed by the military would step up security across the country.

"The President has commanded that police, helped by TNI [the armed forces], to exert all power to secure the nation," Coordinating Minister for Political, Legal and Security Affairs Wiranto said.

Director of the Jakarta-based Institute for Policy Analysis of Conflict, Sidney Jones, says it is still unknown if the recent attacks in Surabaya are being perpetrated by one group.

"This does seem to be part of a coordinated series of actions, and that would also be the first time we had such coordinated activities since the Christmas eve bombings in 2000," she told PM.

"So it's been a long time since any group has shown this capacity.

Ms Jones says possible coordination between Indonesian prisoners and those on the outside needs to be monitored.

"What's worked is good law enforcement and also individual attention to people in terrorist networks to then become cooperative enough to give additional information," she said.

"Part of the ongoing problem is the communication between various groups of extremists operating on the outside with some of their friends who are in prison, and there have been improvements in managing high risk offenders, especially among high profile terrorist prisoners, but there's a long way to go.

"I think one of the things to look for here is to see whether there was any coordination from within prisons with people on the outside. It's one thing to look for but it's too early to say."

Source: Agencies


risingbd/Dhaka/May 14, 2018/AI