Suicide bombing in Indonesia’s second-largest city comes after a family of six targeted a church, killing 13

This article is more than 2 years old

This article is more than 2 years old

A family of five including an eight-year-old child have carried out a bomb attack on a police headquarters in Indonesia’s second largest city, a day after another family killed 13 people in coordinated suicide bombings.

Indonesia church bombings: police say one family and their children behind attacks Read more

Police said the five approached the gates of the headquarters in Surabaya on two motorcycles and detonated the explosives at a security checkpoint at 8.50am on Monday.

Four police officers and six civilians were injured, along with the eight-year-old child. The four adult perpetrators died in the blast.



Police said the child was receiving treatment in hospital. “We hope the child will recover. We believe she was thrown 3 metres (10ft) or so up into the air by the impact of the explosion and then fell to the ground,” said Frans Barung Mangera, a spokesman for East Java police.

“Clearly it’s a suicide bombing,” he added. “We can’t open up all details yet because we are still identifying victims at the scene and the crime scene is being handled.”

Indonesia’s president, Joko Widodo, said: “This is the act of cowards, undignified and barbaric.” He vowed to make sure parliament passed new anti-terrorism laws by next month to combat networks of Islamist militants.

Islamic State claimed responsibility for the attack, the Islamist militant group’s Amaq news agency said, without providing evidence.

On Sunday morning a family of six – a couple and their four children aged between nine and 18 – conducted consecutive suicide bomb attacks on three churches in Surabaya.

Hours later an explosion at an apartment building in Sidoarjo, south of Surabaya, killed three people. Residents reported hearing multiple blasts from the fifth floor of the building at about 9pm on Sunday.

In all, 31 people have died in attacks and explosions since Sunday, including 13 suspected attackers or would-be attackers and 14 civilians, police said.

Sunday’s church attacks, the most deadly terrorist strike in Indonesia in more than a decade, and revelations that a family with young children were behind it, has shocked the country. After some successes in tackling Islamist militancy since 2001, there has been a resurgence in recent years, including in January 2016 when four suicide bombers and gunmen attacked a shopping area in the capital, Jakarta.

Police suspect the attacks on the churches were carried out by a cell of Jemaah Ansharut Daulah (JAD), a group that is thought to have recruited hundreds of Indonesian sympathisers of Isis The father of the family involved in the attacks was the head of the cell, police said.

Police initially said the family were among 500 Isis sympathisers who had returned to Indonesia from Syria, but they later said this was incorrect.