JAKARTA: An Indonesian cathedral was rocked by a suicide bombing on Sunday with physique components littering the chaotic scene as Christians inside celebrated the beginning of Holy Week.
The highly effective blast on the church in Makassar metropolis on Sulawesi island occurred round 10:30 am native time (0330 GMT) and left at the least 14 church officers and congregants injured by particles, police mentioned.
It was not clear if their wounds had been life threatening.
“There have been two folks using on a motorcycle when the explosion occurred on the major gate of the church — the perpetrators had been making an attempt to enter the compound,” Nationwide Police spokesman Argo Yuwono mentioned.
“The bike was destroyed and there are physique components… We’re nonetheless accumulating components and making an attempt to establish the intercourse of the perpetrators.”
Earlier, native police had mentioned at the least one bomber died on the scene. They haven’t confirmed if each attackers had been killed.
Makassar Mayor Mohammad Ramdhan mentioned: “There are a lot of physique components right here on the church compound in addition to on the street.”
A witness on the scene described the explosion as “very robust”.
Police mentioned a church safety guard tried to stop the motorcycle from getting into the compound when the blast occurred.
The explosion on the major Catholic cathedral in Makassar — a port metropolis of about 1.5 million — occurred simply after congregants completed celebrating Palm Sunday, the primary day of Holy Week, which commemorates Jesus’s entry into Jerusalem.
It comes per week earlier than Easter.
“We had been ending the service and folks had been going house when it occurred,” Pastor Wilhelmus Tulak informed reporters.
Church buildings have been focused previously by extremists in Indonesia, the world’s greatest Muslim-majority nation.
In 2018, a dozen folks had been killed when a household of suicide bombers blew themselves up at church buildings throughout Sunday providers in Indonesia’s second-biggest metropolis Surabaya.
The household — together with two daughters aged 9 and 12 — and one other household of 5, which carried out a suicide bombing on a police headquarters, all belonged to the identical Koran examine group and had been linked to native extremist community Jamaah Ansharut Daulah (JAD), which has pledged allegiance to Islamic State.
JAD, which has not claimed accountability for Sunday’s assault, gained notoriety in 2016 for a gun and suicide bomb assault within the capital Jakarta that killed 4 civilians and 4 attackers — together with one who blew himself up at a Starbucks outlet.
It was the primary assault claimed by Islamic State in Southeast Asia.
Indonesia has lengthy struggled with Islamist militancy and has suffered a collection of assaults previously 20 years, together with the 2002 Bali bombings which killed greater than 200 folks, principally international vacationers. The bombings had been Indonesia’s deadliest terror assault.
