JAKARTA – An Indonesian family detonated explosives outside the police headquarters on Monday, leaving six civilians and four police officers wounded.
The police centre attack also left the four bombers dead while one of them, an 8-year-old girl survived in the blast, who is now recovering in the hospital.
Indonesia’s national police chief, Tito Karnavian told a news conference that the bombers drove two motorbikes to the gates of the police station and then detonated the explosives at the security checkpoint.
The brutal coordinated attack stirred panic in country’s second-largest city, Surabaya, and they are believed to be carried out by using pipe bombs.
Church Attacks
The police headquarter attack comes a day after three Churches were targeted by another family, leaving 18 dead.
In the Sunday incident, parents and four children, aged nine to 18, carried out suicide bombings in Surabaya; the attack injured more than 40 people.
According to police, the family had travelled to northern Syria to join the ISIS caliphate but had eventually crossed over the border into Turkey; they were arrested and deported back to Indonesia.
Among the perpetrators that wrecked havoc in the country on Sunday include nine-year-old Pamela Rizkita and her 12-year-old sister Fadillah Sari.
According to police, their father, Dita Upriarto, strapped suicide belts to their waists and dropped them off with their mother, Puji Kuswati, outside the Indonesian Christian Church.
Dita Upriarto then headed to Arjuna Pentecostal Church where he detonated the third bomb inside a Toyota Avanza outside the building.
Indonesian police chief said the family of six, were associated with Jamaah Ansharut Daulah, an offshoot of Indonesian militant groups proscribed by the US State Department.
Additionally, three people were killed in a bomb explosion in an apartment building in East Java. The apartment was located just kilometres away from the Churches that went up in flames, Sunday morning.
