Suicide bomb detonates in Indonesia during a Palm Sunday Mass. Police said two attackers blew themselves up outside a crowded Roman Catholic cathedral on Indonesia’s Sulawesi island, injuring at least 20 people.
Rev. Wilhelmus Tulak, a priest at the cathedral, said he had just finished celebrating Palm Sunday Mass when a loud boom frightened his congregation. He said the explosion happened at 10:30 a.m., when one group of churchgoers was leaving and another group was entering.
He said that security guards at the cathedral were suspicious of two men on a motorcycle who tried to enter the premises and that when they confronted them, one of the men detonated his bomb.
Both perpetrators were killed instantly, according to police, and information found at the scene suggested one of the two was a woman. According to police, the injured included four guards and some congregants.
The attack, which occurred a week before Easter in the world’s most populous Muslim-majority region, occurred as the country was on high alert following the capture in December of the leader of the Southeast Asian terrorist organization, Jemaah Islamiyah, which has been declared a terror group by several nations.
President Joko Widodo denounced the attack on Sunday, saying it had nothing to do with religion and that all religions would not accept any kind of terrorism.
“I call on people to remain calm while worshipping because the state guarantees you can worship without fear,” Widodo said.
He expressed his condolences to those wounded and claimed that the government would pay all medical expenses. He stated he had directed the national police chief to investigate the attack and crackdown on any terrorist network that could have been involved.
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According to Mohammad Mahfud, the coordinating minister for political, legal, and security affairs, at least 20 people were injured in the attack and had been admitted to hospitals for treatment.
“The perpetrators or terrorist groups behind this attack will continue to be pursued,” Mahfud said.
According to Argo Yuwono, a spokesperson for Indonesia’s National Police, police are still seeking to locate the two assailants on the motorcycle and decide if they were linked to a local branch of the outlawed Jemaah Islamiyah network or were operating independently.
In December, Indonesian authorities apprehended the group’s commander, Aris Sumarsono. Following a tip about potential assaults on police and places of worship, the country’s counterterrorism squad detained approximately 64 suspects during the last month, including 19 in Makassar.
The last major attack in Indonesia occurred in May 2018, when two families carried out a series of suicide bombings on churches in Surabaya, Indonesia’s second-largest city, killing a dozen people.
