SURABAYA, Indonesia (AP) – Suspected militants on a motorcycle detonated explosives outside police headquarters in Indonesia’s second-largest city yesterday, a day after coordinated suicide bombings on three churches in the city killed at least eight people.
Police spokesman Frans Barung Mangera said six civilians and four police officers were wounded in the explosion at the police complex in Surabaya. The blast came just hours after police said one family, including girls aged nine and 12, had carried out the church bombings.
The flurry of attacks have raised concerns that previously beaten down militant networks in the world’s most populous Muslim-majority nation have been reinvigorated by the return of some of the estimated 1,100 Indonesians who went to fight with the Islamic State group in Syria.
Experts have warned for several years that when those fighter return, they could pose a significant threat.
Police say the family that carried out Sunday’s suicide bombings had indeed returned to Indonesia from Syria, and IS claimed responsibility for those bombings in a statement carried by its Aamaq news agency.
