Suspected suicide bomber in Indonesia injures 6 at police compound in Medan

Staff Writer With AFP November 13, 2019

1 minute read

A suspected suicide bombing outside a police station in Indonesia has left at least one attacker dead and six other people injured, authorities said on Wednesday, November 13.

The explosion happened around 8:45 a.m. local time (0145 GMT) at the compound in Medan on Sumatra island during morning roll call.

“We suspect this is a suicide bombing with one attacker killed,” national police spokesperson Dedi Prasetyo told reporters in Jakarta.

He said at least six people were wounded, including four officers and two civilians, but that their injuries were not severe.

An AFP reporter at the scene saw a body lying on the ground outside the station.

The motive for the attack was not immediately known, but police stations have been frequent targets for radicals in the world’s biggest Muslim majority nation, which has long struggled with Islamist militancy.

In August, authorities shot and arrested a militant who attacked officers at a station in Indonesia’s second-biggest city Surabaya, while in June another was seriously wounded when he tried to blow himself up outside a police building on Java island.

Last month, the country’s leader Joko Widodo ordered increased security measures after two militants from an Islamic State-linked terror group stabbed Indonesia’s chief security minister Wiranto. He survived the attack.

The pair were later identified as members of Jamaah Anshar Daulah (JAD), an extremist network loyal to Islamic State that was banned in July last year and responsible for several previous attacks – including a series of coordinated suicide bomb attacks perpetrated by a single family struck three churches in Surabaya killing more than a dozen people inn May last year. The following day a family carried out a suicide bomb attack on a police headquarters in Surabaya.