FOR the second time in two days, a family of suicide bombers — including an eight-year-old girl — have waged terrorist attacks in Indonesia using pipe bombs made from a chemical dubbed the “Mother of Satan”.

And members of a third family were all killed in an explosion in their apartment where they are believed to have been making bombs for yet another attack with the same chemicals.

Early yesterday a family, riding two motorbikes, detonated themselves at a security checkpoint at the Surabaya police headquarters in East Java.

Four of the family, including the parents, were killed as well as another two members. An eight-year-old girl was injured and taken to hospital.

It comes just 24 hours after another family – parents and four children, age nine to 18, perpetrated suicide bombings on three churches in Surabaya, killing 18, including six perpetratrors, and injuring more than 40 others.

On Sunday evening, three people in one family were killed in an accidental explosion in an apartment in Sidoarjo, near the city of Surabaya, where they are believed to have been making bombs for another attack.

The mother, father and one child were killed and another two children were taken to hospital. Unexploded pipe bombs, similar to those used at the church earlier in the day, were uncovered.

Indonesian police chief, Tito Karnavian, late yesterday confirmed that the three families involved were all part of one network and knew each other. Two of the main perpetrators had also visited other terrorist prisoners in jail, he said.

A total of 25 people people, including 13 alleged terrorists, died in the wave of attacks.

A further nine terrorist suspects were yesterday arrested and four shot dead during police raids. Authorities said they too were planning further attacks.

General Karnavian said however that the family involved in the church bombings had never been to Syria to fight with Islamic State as previously stated.

A friend of the family had been.

General Karnavian said that at a local level the attacks appeared to be revenge for the continued detention and trial of Indonesian terrorist leader, Aman Abdurahman, who is currently before the courts for inspiring the January 2016 attack on a Starbucks café in Jakarta.

The attacks, which have been condemned around the world, are the first time in Indonesia that young children have been shockingly used as suicide bombers in a worrying new trend.

Explosion hits police office in Indonesia's Surabaya: Police https://t.co/JBM2zpO03E pic.twitter.com/Ez82GQtpUa — Channel NewsAsia (@ChannelNewsAsia) May 14, 2018

The attacks, which have been condemned around the world, are the first time in Indonesia that young children have been shockingly used as suicide bombers in a worrying new trend.

“Using children, this is the first time in Indonesia. A nine-year-old and a 12-year-old kid with a bomb on their waist and then committing suicide,” General Karnavian said, adding this was something frequently done in Syria but never on home soil.

Police have said that the attackers are all members and supporters of Indonesian terror group, Jemaah Ansharut Daulah or JAD, which was formed in 2015 and according to the US State Department is made up of about 24 Indonesian extremist groups who have pledged allegiance to the IS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi.

General Karnavian said the orders for the bombings came from Islamic State central and that pipe bombs were used, made from a chemical called triacetone triperoxide or TATP, a high explosive used in Iraq and Syria where it is called the “Mother of Satan” because of its volatility and ability to cause mass carnage.

The latest wave of Surabaya attacks came just days after a deadly 36-hour standoff in a high-security Jakarta prison housing terrorist inmates, in which five specialist counterterrorist police were killed, along with other terror suspect.

POLICE TARGETED IN SURABAYA BLAST

CCTV footage obtained by CNN Indonesia showed there were about five police guarding a checkpoint outside the Surabaya headquarters.

A black car pulled up at the gate, shortly followed by two small motorcycles reportedly carrying a man, woman and small children.

As they pulled up at the checkpoint, explosive devices were detonated. Police officers moving to query the riders were caught in the blast.

East Java Police spokesman Frans Barung Mangera said a man and a woman on the bike stopped at the security checkpoint.

“That’s where the explosion happened,” he added.

“Two people were riding (on the motorcycle) and a woman was sitting at the back.”

WIDODO DECRIES ‘BARBARIANS’

Indonesian President, Joko Widodo, condemned the attacks as cowardly, barbarian and undignified and vowed to fight and eradicate terrorism at its root, ordering the Police Chief not to make any compromises.

And the President put the country’s parliament on notice that if they fail to pass new anti-terror laws, giving authorities more teeth, by June he will bypass them and issue a new regulation.

The new regulations, first proposed in February 2016, have yet to be passed by Indonesia’s notoriously slow-moving parliament.

AUSTRALIA REACTS

When asked about the church bombings and today’s attacks, Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull conceded the threat of terror in Australia and across the Pacific remained very serious.

“While there has been considerable success against terror in the Middle East the threat is from over. It is very real,” he said.

“We have stopped 14 terror plots in Australia including one that would have brought down a A380.

“It is a threat we are committed to meeting and we are putting those resources into those agencies to keep us safe.

“The attacks are shocking, cowardly, we condemn them utterly. It almost beggars belief, the brutality, the inhumanity, the blasphemy.

“These people are the worst. They are threatening civilised nations, a civilised way of life, harmony and religion.

“They are debasing and defaming Islam and our hearts go out to Indonesia and the families accepted.”

Before today’s blast, Home Affairs Minister Peter Dutton said Australia stood united with Indonesia after the weekend’s attacks.

“This threat is not going away and Australia stands absolutely united with a very, very crucial friend in Indonesia to make sure we can work with the President and all of the people responsible in the leadership in the Indonesian government to keep their people safe,” Mr Dutton told reporters in Canberra on Monday.

Mr Dutton said Canberra would be doing whatever it could to support Jakarta.

Opposition Leader Bill Shorten and Labor’s foreign affairs spokeswoman Penny Wong condemned the attacks.

“Such an attack has no basis in religion, and is an affront to peace-loving people of all faiths,” they said in a joint statement.

Three churches attacked in Indonesia Three churches attacked in Indonesia

“It is particularly concerning to hear reports of the attacks being carried out by a single family, which murdered its own children.” Former prime minister Kevin Rudd said the incidents were a “sobering reminder” of the new danger posed by Islamic State fighters returning from Syria and Iraq. “Significant threat to Australians and westerners in SEA (South East Asian) region,” he tweeted.

Last year, the Philippines scrambled to quash a five-month IS insurgency in Marawi.

Australia provided surveillance aircraft and has been training Filippino troops in urban combat.

FAMILY BEHIND CHURCH BOMBINGS

Sunday’s church bombings was Indonesia’s deadliest attack in years. The attackers -- a mother and father, two daughters aged nine and 12, and two sons aged 16 and 18 -- were linked to local extremist network Jamaah Ansharut Daulah (JAD) which supports IS, police have said.

The mother, identified as Puji Kuswati, and her two daughters were wearing niqab face veils and had bombs strapped to their waists as they entered the grounds of the Kristen Indonesia Diponegoro Church and blew themselves up, police have said.

The father, JAD cell leader Dita Priyanto, drove a bomb-laden car into the Surabaya Centre Pentecostal Church while his sons rode motorcycles into Santa Maria church, where they detonated explosives they were carrying, according to authorities.

The family killed at least seven churchgoers. Some 41 people were injured.

JAD, led by jailed radical Aman Abdurrahman, has been linked to several deadly incidents, including a 2016 gun and suicide attack in the capital Jakarta that left four attackers and four civilians dead.

That was the first assault claimed by IS in Southeast Asia.

Police on Sunday said four suspected JAD members were killed in a shootout during raids linked to a deadly prison riot this week.

#BersatuLawanTeroris Teror bom kembali terjadi di Polrestabes Surabaya. Bagaimana kondisi di lokasi saat ini? Laporkan ke https://t.co/yxfv7GD6uL https://t.co/MbBYvCHgwD pic.twitter.com/y6TZDJ51Hd — pasangmatadotcom (@PasangMata) May 14, 2018

Centre for Strategic and International Studies Indonesia researcher Evan Laksmana says Surabaya has seen little unrest in recent decades.

“The city has only seen three attacks since 1977 and the last one in 2001 was targeted at private citizen/property,” Mr Laksmana tweeted.

Last week, five Indonesia elite counter-terror police were killed after a riot in a high-security Jakarta police complex housing terrorist prisoners.

Indonesia’s deputy national police chief, Syafruddin, said the police officers, from the country’s elite counter-terror squad known as Densus 88 (Or Detachment 88) had been “sadistically slaughtered” by the terrorists.

Syafruddin said that 156 terrorist prisoners and those awaiting trial as suspects, housed in the jail inside the Brimob headquarters, had held nine Detachment 88 officers hostage, murdered five of them and injured four. One terrorist prisoner was also killed.

The Islamic State terrorist group has reportedly claimed responsibility for the attack and a series of gruesome images, purportedly from inside the prison during the siege, have circulated on radical social media. However police warned against believing the images are from this siege and have not commented on their authenticity.

The archipelago nation of some 17,000 islands has long struggled with Islamic militancy, including the 2002 Bali bombings that killed 202 people -- mostly foreign tourists -- in the country’s worst-ever terror attack.